The Age of Exploration

His name was Christopher Columbus. He, along with many other people, created the Age of Exploration. This era was made great because of the many discoveries and explorations along with the new technological and educational expansions. Many of the technological and educational advances made the thought of exploration. Another significant factor in the greatness of this age of exploration was that the Europeans had thought they had things figured out only to discover an entire continent by accident in place of their shortcut to Asia. The Age of Exploration was one of the most significant eras in the history of mankind.

Marco Polo, son of a merchant family, traveled to china and returned with goods that astonished the Europeans. He wrote about his adventures and it was printed two centuries later. Columbus read these prints and became hungry for profit. He wanted to find another way to Asia to avoid the harsh mountains and bandits met through traveling east on land. Columbus set out west under funding. In place on Asia, he found what is now called America. For the most part, the Age of Exploration was thought to be started by Columbus when he discovered America. However, contrary to other’s belief, Columbus actually wasn’t the first to set foot in America, but he was the first to report it, so the fame was his. In 1001, Leif Erikson and his crew landed on America; however, he and his crew were killed by Eskimos. America was also not named by Columbus either. It was named after Amerigo Vespucci by a cartographer who was quite interested in Vespucci’s reports from when he explored “America” after Columbus.

The early, short-distanced explorations and new technology introduced in these times allowed further exploration. Prior to Columbus’s explorations, Europe had been exploring the coasts of Africa and used new devices to help them. They had developed the shapes of ships and sail as well as create devices that showed their heading and latitude. However they lacked the technology to track longitude. Later, mass printing was discovered and it allowed books and articles to b massively produced and distributed. Many people were very uneducated because of the fact that books weren’t very common because of the poor reproduction by hand. People like Columbus got his hands on Marco Polo’s adventure writings. He was able to study the wind patterns from other sailor’s diaries. All these advancements came together at the right time for Columbus and he put them all together along with his dream and he discovered the Americas, and unlike his predecessors, he was able to make it back alive to tell the tale.

The Age of Exploration, aside from its greatness, was full of accidents, luck, and a little knowledge to help. Columbus was a man of money. He was Asia as a goldmine so he wanted to try to get to Asia easier. He was educated for the most part and understood that the Earth was not flat and that it was actually spherical, meaning he could go around the other direction to reach Asia. However he didn’t plan on something being in the way as he did not know how large the Earth was. He got lucky with the wind patterns and he was lucky not to land on a tribe on Eskimos. He was also lucky to be funded from Queen Isabella. The natives were also discovered on accident thus leading to their enslavement. All the Aztec, Incan, Mayan, and Native American tribe civilization’s extinction was now imminent.

In the end, Europe was able to create the great Age of Exploration from some greed, luck, and a few people who actually explore to find new land and not just money. Columbus was not just a merchant trying to make it big though. He was still an explorer discovered America first, however technically, he didn’t. However many explorers and other people lost the spot light to Columbus, but Columbus could not have ever done anything without them.