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Age Of Exploration Dbq Analysis

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The Age of Exploration was a period in human history spearheaded by the Portuguese in which the Old and New World came into contact and began the process of globalization. So began an exchange of anything and everything from technology and food to religions and diseases. The natives were introduced to new ways to farm by using horses and iron tools brought by the Europeans. An unforeseen consequence that arose from the contact between the natives and Europeans was the introduction of many never before seen diseases such as smallpox to the natives. The result would be wide scale death throughout the native populations of the Americas. For those who survived and for the generations to come. the linking of the Old and New World would be beneficial …show more content…

For example. horses were nowhere to be found in the Americas until now. They made hunting and the nomad lifestyle that many natives led much easier to support. The Europeans arrived bearing steel armor and weapons that were far more advanced than what the natives themselves bore. The cultural diffusion between the two groups would eventually teach the natives how to augment old practices and tools such as the iron plough for farming. Even jobs and skills were taught, “...the natives have successfully learned all the Spanish trades…” as Bernal Diaz states in The True History of the Conquest of Spain (Document 1). The exchanges did not just end with physical things, something akin to the Crusades also took place. The explorers and conquistadors sought to convert the natives to Christianity and spread many of their own …show more content…

Without the desire to acquire a safer trade route over sea to Asia, no one would have ever tried sailing west to get east. “The explorers of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth centuries did not set out to make a revolution in knowledge, but that is what they achieved,” wrote Christopher Farman in “The Ocean Adventures” found in Voyages of Discovery (Document 4). This quote shows how many of the explorers did not set out to find the Americas, but once they knew what it was the Americas were quickly integrated with their own world. Many of the foundational thoughts and ideas of today’s society would have never developed if not for this link between continents. Arthur M. Schlesinger makes note of this writing, “In fact it was precisely the contact with the Americas that stimulated Europe to develop further some of the principles we take for granted today as the basic minimum of human rights…” in Columbus on Trial (Document 5). Without all of this exploration the world would have continued to be stuck in isolation until inevitably some other group of people decide to explore the sea. Contact between the Old and New world would have happened at one point or

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