Expanding Horizons

European exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries drew on many sources. A growing desire for expansion and trade, along with advances in shipbuilding and commercial technique, fostered the search for new markets and for the legendary sources of precious metals and other commodities.

Portuguese exploration and trade along the West African coast and to Atlantic islands, encouraged and directed by Prince Henry de Avis, the Navigator, continued throughout the 15th century. He assembled an international team of experts which made revolutionary advances in geography, navigation, and cartography.

Handbooks, guides, and charts, along with the invention of more sophisticated and practical nautical instruments, professionalized what had been largely an intuitive craft. Crucial to these innovations were Muslim and Jewish contributions in mapmaking and navigational instruments. Christopher Columbus went to sea on the crest of these maritime advances.

European World View: Imagined and Observed

European world view in the late 15th century wavered between bizarre imaginings about the unknown and scientific observations of the known. T-O maps illustrate a Medieval world view laid out into three continents by a T within a circle, but also record real and imagined countries.

Theories of the universe first proposed by ancient Greek or Roman philosophers were accepted well into the 16th century. For example, the Vopel globe was based on Ptolemy's idea of an earth-centered universe. Ironically, it was made in 1543, the same year that Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric, or sun-centered, theory of the universe. Caspar Vopel was a master-craftsman of astronomical and navigational tools. He made the sphere encircling the globe so that the seasonal changes in the orbits of the heavenly bodies could be observed. His "nocturnal," or compendium, was used for telling time at night and had several other navigational functions.

Continue the Voyage with Christopher Columbus or abandon ship and use the Outline.