1. The Age of Exploration 1492-1610

2. Before Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas, Europeans didn’t know those continents even existed.

4. Columbus’s route to “Asia” Portugal’s sea route to Asia
The Portuguese focused on finding a sea route to Asia by sailing around Africa, something no European had ever managed to do. Christopher Columbus decided to try a different route. He planned to search for a sea route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean. He had no idea that there were two continents between Europe and Asia!
Columbus’s route to “Asia”
Portugal’s sea route to Asia

5. On the way to the Indies, Columbus bumped into America and discovered the world’s biggest secret—secret to Europeans, that is: two new continents. Until he died in 1506, Columbus remained convinced he had reached Asia. Soon after that point, other Europeans realized that the land he had explored was not India, but a “new world” to them. In 1507 a German mapmaker named this land “America.”

6. Soon other European countries explored and claimed land in the Americas.

7. The Americas were not empty
The Americas were not empty. Early European explorers and settlers came into contact with the native people who already inhabited the land. From this contact, came great change. Both groups learned from each other, but this contact had a devastating effect on the native inhabitants. Many of them died from European diseases or conflict with the new arrivals.

8. Why were Europeans willing to make the long, dangerous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to explore an unknown land? A short explanation is the saying “Gold, God and Glory.” They were searching for wealth and fame and along the way, they hoped to convert the Indians to Christianity. Be ready for more detail though! This year you will study the reasons Europeans had for exploration in more depth than you did in earlier grades.

9. Whether you have studied the reasons for exploration in depth or just in overview, it is true that life in the eastern and the western hemispheres was changed forever by the encounter between Europeans and the native people of the Western Hemisphere.