History Literature / Serpent

* ContinuityNod: Austin and Zavala mention the events of ''Literature/RaiseTheTitanic''

* OddlySmallOrganization: For an organization of its range and power, the Brotherhood is oddly small and intimate in its operations, deploying a single operative for most of their missions and subcontracting assassins when needed. Even weirder is that they don't seem to lack dedicated manpower, as they late show that their have cultlike members trained in ancient Mayan ways (who are gleefully killed by their own boss for the kicks) and a private army that is left offscreen. This approach ends up [[spoiler:killing Halcón himself, who goes to a dangerous mission with the sole help of the mentioned hitman.]]
* ShoutOut: Professor José Chi's surname is probably a reference to Gaspar Antonio Chi, one of the mestizos who accused the aforementioned Diego de Landa for his misdeeds in Yucatan.
* TorosYFlamenco: Halcón, a Spaniard naturalized as a United States citizen, is mentioned to be a former bullfighter, and a cheating one at that.

* ArtisticLicenseHistory:
** The whole premise of the novel, the claim that questioning UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus' place in history was a heresy punished by fire by the UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition, is complete fantasy. The Inquisition did have their hands in civilian affairs, but keeping an official history of the discoveries was not among them, and the Spanish Empire in general was particularly bad at this job. Technically, there was no "heresy punished by fire" either, as any charge of heresy by itself could be escaped by publicly repenting; the Spanish Inquisition only burned heretics in the stake if they refused to repent or if they were recidivists.
** In the novel, a Spanish historian claims that, as the Bible doesn't mention America, talking about the mere existence of a fourth continent was therefore heresy too, which is why the Crown of Spain pretended that the New World was just part of the India or China. Even without going on the fact that the Crown of Spain was actually very quick to recognize the existence of a new continent, it should be noted that the Bible doesn't mention India or China either; it simply doesn't go on about geography enough to clarify establish which lands is the Earth supposed to have. Anyway, this point in particular evidences a very Protestant-colored understanding of the Bible on Cussler's part; for the Catholic Church of the time, the Bible itself wasn't an ultimate authority on the topic of heresy (or any other), but rather the base of a doctrine that they administered and shaped to their judgement.
** Amerigo Vespucci didn't "scientifically demonstrate" that Columbus had discovered a new continent, only claimed so, and he did this in 1501, three years after Columbus himself had realized in the Orinoco river that he had found much more than a mere island (and even then, it's now believed that Vespucci's 1501 booklet, where he made the claim, might have not been written by him to begin with). The name of America cannot even be attributed to Vespucci himself either, as it was actually the work of French and German cartographers who were impressed with Vespucci's supposed works and saw it fit to give that name to the New World. The same editors, by the way, later thought better and retired the name, but by then it had become popular in northern Europe and it sticked.
** It's also claimed that the Inquisition tried to eliminate Vespucci because his conclusions threatened Spain's sovereignty over America against other countries like Portugal. This fails to appreciate that, as Vespucci was a highly valued navigator for the Spanish crown, any conclusion of his about the New World's nature would have still placed it in Spanish hands. The claim is especially funny because Portugal of all nations had just struck an accord with Spain in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, in which the two countries divided the world in two sections and agreed not to get in each other's domain (although the Portuguese did secure a chunk of America in the process, which is the reason why Brazil ended in their hands in 1500 by way of Pedro Álvares Cabral).
** The novel also has Prof. Stefano Gallo claim, typically so, that the Spanish Empire was solely interested in "gold and slaves" during the Conquest of America. This succinct description would have fitted much more its Portuguese counterpart, a more commerce-oriented empire who had also the monopoly of the black slave market due to Africa falling on their side of the Treaty of the Tordesillas. In the Spanish Empire, enslaving native people from the new territories was illegal, meaning that their slave workforce, fed almost exclusively by the African market managed by their Iberian neighbors, was never their priority; they were focused instead on turning natives into subjects and assimilating their indigenous political structures into productive provinces. They did adopt the native custom of turning war prisoners into slaves, but this was usually very limited in context and rules and wasn't that commonly done either.
** Contrary to what Professor Chi claims, there was no "genocide" of Mayan people by the Spanish Empire, and it would have been pretty difficult to achieve in any case. The UsefulNotes/SpanishConquestOfTheMaya was very slow and gradual due to their highly decentralized society, their harsh terrain and climate, their lack of gold in plenty, and their remoteness from the main centers of development in México. Even whenever they made efforts to conquer it, the Spaniards generally adhered to their modus opperandi of teaming up with some local tribes, helping them conquer their nearest ancestral enemies, and Christianizing everybody to make them useful subjects and workers, so a gratuitous extermination was both difficult and self-defeating. In fact, given that those conficts were generally fought against small states every time, the conquest of the Maya didn't even feature the massive, bloody setpiece battles fought against the Mexica and Inca empires.
** Professor Chi also mentions Diego de Landa, a bloodthirsty Christian missionary who ordered the burning of most Maya codices, as an example of the Spanish Empire actively working to destroy Maya culture. He forgets to mention that De Landa was put in trial and sent back to Spain for his actions because their own superiors realized he was a complete loon. His destruction of the codices was lamented in the empire, as most higher-ups weren't usually opposed to conservate native artifacts; in fact, two of the Mayan codices that still exist in real life were sent to Spain by UsefulNotes/HernanCortez himself as a tribute, and were conservated and studied there.
** Speaking of Cortés, the book's character makes an unfavorable intellectual comparison to Napoleon because the latter included scientists in his expedition and Cortés didn't. The point is fallacious, as Napoleon's campaign went through developed and familiar countries like Egypt and Siria, while Cortés was exploring fully uncharted territory three centuries earlier, in a time when scientific exploration was very primitive and the Indies were a veritable DeathWorld – clearly not the kind of business for whose very first expedition you would summon non-combatant personal from the University of Salamanca or the like.
** Nina uses the Biblical name "Tharsis" to refer to Carthage. In real life, there are a lot of theories about what place did the Biblical authors mean by Tharsis, like Tartessos, Sardinia and the Phoenician coast itself, but Carthage is not among them. Tartessos has been traditionally considered the most likely option, with some authors having proposed that Tharsis was the native name of the Guadalquivir river, which the Romans got wrongly as Baetis because they mistook Tartessian script by Greek alphabet (the Tartessian T and R letters happen to visually resemble the Greek beta and delta, a confusion through which ''Tarsis'' became ''Badsis'', later corrupted to ''Baitis'').

** The whole premise of the novel, the claim that questioning UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus' place in history was a heresy punished by fire by the UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition, is complete fantasy. The Inquisition did have their hands in civilian affairs, but keeping an official history of the discoveries was not among them, and the Spanish Empire in general was particularly bad at this job. Technically, there was no "heresy punished by fire" either, as the Spanish Inquisition only burned people in the stake if they refused to publicly repent.

** Amerigo Vespucci didn't "scientifically demonstrate" that Columbus had discovered a new continent, only claimed so, and he did this in 1501, three years after Columbus himself had realized in the Orinoco river that he had found much more than a mere island (and even then, it's now believed that Vespucci's 1501 booklet might have not been written by him to begin with). The name of America cannot even be attributed to Vespucci himself either, as it was the work of French and German cartographers who were impressed with Vespucci's supposed works and saw it fit to give that name to the New World. The same editors, by the way, later thought better and retired the name, but by then it had become popular in northern Europe and it sticked.
** It's also claimed that the Inquisition tried to eliminate Vespucci because his conclusion threatened Spain's sovereignty over America against other countries like Portugal. This fails to appreciate that, as Vespucci was a highly valued navigator for the Spanish crown, any conclusion of his about the New World's nature would have still placed it in Spanish hands. The claim is especially funny because Portugal of all nations had just struck an accord with Spain in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, in which the two countries divided the world in two sections and agreed not to get in each other's domain (although the Portuguese did secure a chunk of America in the process, which is the reason why Brazil ended in their hands in 1500 by way of Pedro Álvares Cabral).

** Nina uses the Biblical name "Tharsis" to refer to Carthage. In real life, there are a lot of theories about what place did the Biblical authors mean by Tharsis, but Carthage is ironically not among them. The most popular options, by the way, are Tartessos, Sardinia and the Phoenician coast itself.

** The whole premise of the novel, the claim that questioning UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus' place in history was a heresy punished by fire by the UsefulNotes/SpanishInquisition, is complete fantasy. The Inquisition did have their hands in civilian affairs, but keeping an official history of the discoveries was not among them. Technically, there was no "heresy punished by fire" either, as the Spanish Inquisition only executed people if they refused to publicly repent.
** In the novel, a Spanish historian claims that, as the Bible doesn't mention America, talking about the mere existence of a fourth continent was therefore heresy too, which is why the Crown of Spain pretended that the New World was just part of the India or China. Even without going on the fact that the Spanish Empire was actually very quick to recognize the existence of a new continent, it should be noted that the Bible doesn't mention India or China either; it simply doesn't go on about geography enough to clarify establish how many lands is the Earth supposed to have. Anyway, this point in particular evidences a very Protestant-colored understanding of the Bible on Cussler's part; for the Catholic Church of the time, the Bible wasn't the ultimate authority in worldly affairs, but rather the base of a doctrine that they administered and shaped to their judgement.
** Amerigo Vespucci didn't "scientifically demonstrate" that Columbus had discovered a new continent, only claimed so, and he did this in 1501, three years after Columbus himself had realized in the Orinoco river that he had found much more than a mere island (and even then, it's now believed that Vespucci's 1501 booklet might have not been his work to begin with). The name of America cannot even be attributed to Vespucci himself either, as it was the work of French and German cartographers who were impressed with Vespucci's supposed works and saw it fit to give that name to the New World. The same editors, by the way, later thought better and retired the name, but by then it had become popular in northern Europe and it sticked.
** It's also claimed that the Inquisition tried to eliminate Vespucci because his conclusion threatened Spain's sovereignty over America against other countries like Portugal. This fails to appreciate that, as Vespucci was a highly valued navigator for the Spanish crown, any conclusion of his about the New World's nature would have still placed it in Spanish hands. The claim is especially funny because Portugal of all nations was in a semi-alliance with Spain and had already secured a chunk of America for themselves in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (which is the reason why Brazil ended in their hands in 1500 by way of Pedro Álvares Cabral).
** The novel also has Prof. Stefano Gallo claim, typically so, that the Spanish Empire was solely interested in "gold and slaves" during the Conquest of America. This succinct description would have fitted much more its Portuguese counterpart, a more commerce-oriented empire who had also the monopoly of the black slave market due to Africa falling on their side of the Treaty of the Tordesillas. In the Spanish Empire, enslaving native people from the new territories was illegal, meaning that their slave workforce, fed almost exclusively by the African market managed by their Iberian neighbors, was never a priority; they rather focused on turning natives into subjects and assimilating their indigenous political structures into productive provinces.
** Contrary to what Professor Chi claims, there was no "genocide" of Mayan people by the Spanish Empire. The conquest of the Maya people was very gradual due to their highly decentralized society, which means that it didn't even feature the massive, bloody battles fought against the Mexica and Inca empires. Most of those can hardly be called a genocide on the Spaniards' part either, considering that they operated in alliance with other powerful indigenous nations, which composed the biggest part of their armies and were often guilty of the worst bloodshed due to their ancestral enmities with their common enemies.
** Professor Chi also mentions Diego de Landa, a bloodthirsty Christian missionary who ordered the burning of most Maya codices, as an example of the Spanish Empire actively working to destroy Maya culture. He forgets to mention that De Landa was put in trial and sent back to Spain for his actions because their own superiors realized he was a complete loon. His destruction of the codices was lamented in the empire, as most higher-ups weren't usually opposed to conservate native artifacts; in fact, two of the Mayan codices that still exist in real life were sent to Spain by UsefulNotes/HernanCortez himself to be studied.
** Speaking of Cortés, the book's character makes an unfavorable intellectual comparison to Napoleon because the latter included scientists in his expedition and Cortés didn't. The point is fallacious, as Napoleon's campaign went through developed and familiar countries like Egypt and Siria, while Cortés was exploring fully uncharted territory three centuries earlier, in a time when scientific exploration was very primitive and the Indies were a veritable DeathWorld – clearly not the kind of business for whose very first expedition you would summon non-combatant personal from the University of Salamanca.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Nina's ability to recall ancient events is barely touched upon, as well as left unexplained at the end, but it really seems to be a supernatural ability, given that it allowed her to witness an unknown building device from the ancient Egypt that puzzled an engineer of her own time – something Nina could have hardly imagined.