Age of Exploration

Question: Is it simple human nature to be adventurous? Is it something we're born with or must it be taught?

If we restarted humanity over and over again, will we always discovery new lands, or reach the moons and the stars?

The Age of Exploration

Essential Questions of the Unit:

• How did the Europeans interact with the native people of the "New World?"

• What were the main causes for European Exploration of previously undiscovered lands?

• What were the effects of the Colombian Exchange?

• How did the Age of Discovery affect the global Slave trade economy?

During the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Muslim Ottoman Empire sacked the city, and promptly blocked European access to the area limiting Eurasian trade.

They also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea

Europeans logically were forced to secure alternative access points to the spice/silk trades.

Caravels were Portuguese ships that were highly maneuverable. The triangular sails helped steer the boat, while the square sails were for power and speed.

Christopher Columbus and the adventurers that followed him opened up an epic exchange between the new and old worlds.

This exchange caused sweeping cultural changes in both societies. Eventually thousands of plants, animals, and diseases found their way across the Atlantic Ocean. This is called the Columbian Exchange

here's a bigger list

With the Atlantic Ocean separating the two hemispheres, Europeans had never seen foods like potatoes, corn, or turkeys. And conversely, the Americans had never seen coffee, oranges, rice, or sheep

From the Old World

From the New World

Plants

Animals

Plants

Animals

• Guinea Pigs
• Llamas
• Turkeys

So what are the effects of the Columbian Exchange?

This exchange of foods and animals had a dramatic impact on society. New world crops like corn and potatoes became the staples for old world peoples. Scholars estimate that 1/3 of all food crops grown around the world came from America

• Tobacco
• Vanilla
• Tomatoes
• Strawberries
• Potatoes
• Rubber
• Pineapples

• Avocados
• Beans
• Cashews
• Chili Peppers
• Chocolate
• Corn
• Peanuts

• Bananas
• Black Pepper
• Coffee
• Garlic and Onions
• Lettuce
• Peaches and Pears
• Sugar
• Wheat, Rye, and Oats
• Cheese

• Cattle
• Chickens
• Donkeys
• Goats
• Horses
• Cats
• Mice and Rats
• Pigs
• Rabbits
• Sheep

Imagine Italian food without tomatoes!

Imagine Mexican food without cheese, onions, chicken, pork, beef, or beans!!

Diseases

Also important was the exchange of.....

From the New World

From the Old World

• Syphilis

• Smallpox

• Measles

• The Common Cold

• Chicken Pox

is thought to have been brought back by Christopher Columbus's crew members, and has ravaged the old world ever since.

"Sailors by the nature of their profession, are men without women, and therefore men of many women. We can imagine no group more perfectly suited for guaranteeing that veneral syphilis would have worldwide distribution."

Smallpox is a vicious disease that is responsible for 300-500 million deaths in the 20th century alone!

• Malaria

• Yellow Fever

• Influenza

Commonly known as the "flu"

Kills 250,000 to 500,000 people a year

650,000 People died of Malaria last year!

Old World diseases were extremely devastating to the Native American populations. With no natural resistance to these Old World diseases, millions of Native Americans were wiped out.

These explosions of diseases were called Epidemics. These epidemics returned again and again, and scholars estimate that 50% of the New World populations died off from old world diseases

Conquistadors, or conquerors took advantage of weakened native populations and killed the surviving warriors.

This made the American empires like the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans weak and exposed. The conquistadors then took the land and gold for themselves