When East Meets West

Europeans, knew and were interested in trade with Africa and Asia, but they knew nothing of the Americas.

In the 1400’s Native Americans knew nothing of Europeans.

Caravan traveling from China to Europe, Catalan Atlas ca. 1375

Since the time of Marco Polo’s travels to the Far East in the 1200’s, Europe was interested in establishing trade routes with China and the Indies

Europeans wanted the silks and spices from China.

These Trade Routes were Long and Dangerous- Could Take years to travel from Europe to Asia

Some started to believe that sea travel might be better than land travel.

Prince Henry of Portugal set up a school to train sailors in NAVIGATION.

Navigation is the skill of controlling how a ship travels

Prince Henry believed the best way to get from Europe to Asia would be to go around Africa and sail east across the Indian Ocean

Improvements in Navigation

• Better maps, follow coasts at first, used compass• better ships- square sails and new hull design,

heavy enough to carry canon• use of astrolabe- magnetic compass sail by stars• knowledge of wind patterns• First the Portuguese (Prince Henry) then Spanish,

France and England became interested in Sea Travel.

Mariner using cross staff to determine latitude.

The astrolabe helped sailors sail by the sun and stars.

The compass helped identify the direction of the wind.

Portuguese Explorers• Prince Henry- 1460 looking for trade along

African Coast• Bartholomew Diaz- made it to Cape of Good

Hope 1488• Vasco de Gama- went in search of Christians and

spices- arrived in India

Christopher Columbus

• believed had to be a short cut by sailing west

• Asked the King and Queen of Spain to give him ships and money for his voyage

• Columbus- (Genoan) went west 1492

• arrived in Caribbean thought it was the Indies thus the west Indies-

How Columbus Thought the World Looked

On October 12, 1492 Christopher Columbus first saw the island of Guanahani. He renamed it San Salvador. In the next few days he made his first encounter with people living on these islands.

This was the start of a period that changed the world forever. This encounter of two groups of people is an EVENT THAT CHANGES HISTORY

Columbus thought he had reached Asia and that he was in the Southeast Asian Islands known as the Indies. That is why he called the people he met on the Island of San Salvador Indians.

Columbus made 3 more voyages and never realized that he had bumped into a whole new land.

It wasn’t until 1499 when an Italian named Americo Vespucci sailed west and said that this land was not the Indies but a whole new Continent.

Because he was the first to admit that this was not Asia but a new world, he got the new continent named after him ----AMERICA!

But this New World was only NEW to the Europeans.

Americans, Native Americans, had lived and built civilizations in this land thousands of years before Columbus BUMPED into them.

At least 15,000 years ago, people came to America from Asia-Across Bearing Sea and South to all parts of America.

These people developed their own Empires and cultures, buildings, organized government, but no written language. Some were rich in gold and silver.

By the early 1500’s many other Explorers came to this new world to claim land for European countries.

Meeting of CulturesExchange of culture-Indians gave us corn, potatoes, pumpkins, beans, sweet potatoes, pepper, tomatoes, and tobacco.

We gave them the gun, horse and diseases, which killed about 60-80% of the natives of both N. & S. America.

The wealth of the Inca and Aztec Empires brought the Spanish Conquistador

(conqueror)

The Native Americans were to be conquered and controlled.

When East Meets West