- The group of Europeans that reached North America about 500 years before Columbus were the Vikings.
- Technology is scientific knowledge or tools.
- Expedition is a trip taken with the goal of exploring.
- Navigation is the science of planning and following a route.
- Explorers had to be entrepreneurs because they set up and ran their expeditions just as an entrepreneur sets up and runs a business.
- During the Reconquista, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain could not sponsor Columbus’s expedition because King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were too busy fighting a war.
- King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain supported Columbus’s expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492.
- Renaissance means “rebirth”. It began in Italy and then spread across Europe. This was a time of new ideas.
- Ferdinand Magellan was the leader of the first expedition to sail around the world.
- Juan Ponce de Leon explored and claimed for Spain what is now the state of Florida
- Vasco Nunez de Balboa explored the land that connects the Americas and became the first Spanish explorer to reach the Pacific Ocean.
- Henry Hudson explored and claimed for Holland much of what is now the state of New York and surrounding areas.
- Francisco Vasquez de Coronado explored and claimed for Spain much of what is now the southwestern United States.
- Hernando de Soto explored and claimed for Spain much of the southern half of what is now the United States.
- Columbus sailed west from Europe hoping to find a more direct water route to Asia.
- The Spanish Conquistador that took control of the Inca Empire in Peru was Francisco Pizarro.
- A treaty is an agreement between countries.
- Spanish explorers and soldiers became known as conquistadors or conquerors.
- Reform – to change.
- Northwest Passage – a waterway in North America thought to connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean which would be a shortcut to Asia. The first country to find the Northwest Passage would control an important new trade route between Europe and Asia would gain wealth and power.
- Verrazano, Cartier, and Hudson were sent to search for the Northwest Passage in North America.
- Explorer Henry Hudson made four voyages in search of the Northwest Passage.
- Henry Hudson’s third voyage was paid for by the Dutch East India Company.
- Hudson spent a month exploring a river in what is now New York. He named the river after himself and claimed the entire Hudson River valley for the Dutch rulers.
- During Hudson’s last voyage, his crew mutinied or rebelled and sent Henry Hudson and eight others adrift at sea.
- Three problems the European explorers faced were 1. They needed better maps and new technology for long voyages. 2. They needed a lot of money to pay the costs of their expeditions. 3. They faced great dangers in exploring unknown seas and lands.
- Christopher Columbus thought the lands he had reached were Asia.
- Amerigo Vespucci began to think that maybe Earth was larger than most people thought because the places that he saw did not fit Marco Polo’s descriptions of Asia.
- Balboa’s crew reached the Pacific Ocean proving that Amerigo Vespucci was right about an unknown continent.
- European trading companies began paying for expeditions and sending explorers to look for the Northwest Passage because they wanted to set up trade routes.
