The Discovery of America

 

A diary entry:

Dear Diary,

Today was an incredible day! I was on a journey with Christopher Columbus, an explorer from Italy who sailed for Spain. We were looking for a faster way to reach Asia by sailing west across the big Atlantic Ocean.

We sailed for over a month, and we started to worry if we would ever find land. But today, one of the crew shouted, “Land!” I will never forget that moment! We were so happy and excited. We anchored near an island, and Columbus named it San Salvador.

At first, we thought we were in Asia, but soon we realized this was a new place. There were people here who were kind and curious. They had their own ways of living, and we saw new foods and plants. We shared things from Spain with them, and we learned about their land too.

This discovery will change the world. Many ships will come here, and people from Europe will connect with people across the ocean. We will share foods, animals, and ideas, we will build universities and teach them who Jesus is! This journey was a great adventure, and I am glad to be part of history.

Goodbye for now,
Marco

A little bit of extra information:

Europe was beginning to expand to the New World. Trade with Asia was common, after Europeans found their way around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Late in this period the European countries started setting up colonies there.

In the field of ideas, this time saw a rebirth of interest in the writings of scholars from ancient Greece and Rome and a new emphasis on the use of observation as the basis of knowledge. This series of developments, called the Renaissance, in turn led to new ideas such as the model of the solar system with the sun at the centre while the planets revolved around it, proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).

The spread of these new ideas was aided by the development of printing using movable type, devised by Johannes Gutenberg (c.1398–1468) in the 1450s.

There was also a significant change in the economy, with a decline in the number of people holding land under the feudal system. Instead of getting access to land in return for military service or unpaid labour, farmers paid rent in goods or money.

Another way of learning about this event: architecture, archaeology, drawings, statues, artifacts...

We can also hear the story from someone: