The Age of Exploration

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The Age of Exploration
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Here are a few facts about Europe in the 1500s to
give you an idea of how people lived
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Ever wonder why most people get married in the
spring? Because in 1500s Europe, people took
their YEARLY bath in May. Waiting longer meant
the smell grew stronger, so brides carried
bouquets of flowers to hide the body odor.
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Baths at that time took place in a big tub filled
with water heated over a fire. The man of the
house got the first bath, followed by his sons
and any other man living under the same roof.
Then came the women and finally the babies.
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Houses had thatched roofs made of thick straw
piled high. It was a nice warm bed for dogs,
cats, bugs, snakes, birds, and any other animal
or insect that could get up there. When it
rained, often the animals would either fall off
the roof or cave through into the house. Hence
the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
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The food they ate was cooked in one big pot hung
over a fire. Every day they lit the fire and
added whatever they had to the stew. Supper,
then, was the fresh, hot stew of mostly
vegetables, and the leftovers would stay in the
pot overnight. They would reheat these leftovers
until they were gone. This where you get the
rhyme "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold,
peas porridge in the pot, nine days old."
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Families that could afford pork were wealthy.
Often, a family that had bacon would hang it up
to show it off. It was a sign of wealth if a man
could "bring home the bacon."
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Wealthy families had plates made out of pewter.
It wasn't known at the time, but eating foods
with high acid content on pewter plates causes
some of the lead to contaminate the food, causing
lead poisoning and death. So for the next
several hundred years, tomatoes were thought to
be poison.
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Most people didn't have pewter plates. They used
a "trencher", which was a piece of wood with the
middle scooped out like a bowl. Often, trenchers
were made of stale bread, so old and hard it
could be reused over and over. Trenchers were
never washed, and the wood or bread got moldy,
and worms and maggots took up residence in them.
Mmmmmmmmm
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The growing population in tiny little England
caused drastic burial measures. In some
cemeteries, an entire family would be buried in
one deep grave, one on top of the other. If
there happened to come a flood and the ground
gave way, watch out for floating cadavers.
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Other times, graves were dug up and the bones of
the dead removed and taken to a mausoleum. The
graves would then be reused.
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When re-opening the coffins of the dead, it was
discovered that 1 in 25 coffins were found to
have scratch marks on the inside. So to keep
from burying live people, it became common to tie
a string around the wrist of the corpse, run it
through a hole in the coffin, and attach it to a
bell above the grave.
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A person was paid to sit in the cemetery all
night (graveyard shift) to listen for the bell.
If you were lucky, you could be "saved by the
bell," and if someone who had watched your burial
saw you walking around later, he might call you a
"dead ringer" for yourself.
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By the late 1400s, Europe's population was
growing. The Black Plague and waves of barbarian
invaders were things of the past, and Europe was
becoming a strong, wealthy place again.
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The growing population had to eat, and without
refrigeration, it was impossible to store food
for long. The people needed spices to cover up
the rancid taste of their terrible food. And
they were willing to pay for these spices.
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Most of the spices Europeans loved came from
Asia, specifically from India. But Islamic
traders controlled the overland routes to Asia,
and they drove the prices up. What Europe needed
was a way to get directly to Asia without having
to go through the Muslim traders. They knew that
such a route would be a gold mine for which ever
man or nation found it.
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Prince Henry the Navigator encouraged sea
exploration of Africa, just to the south of the
European continent. He hoped that in Africa, he
could convert the native Africans to
Christianity, while discovering a route around
the Muslims to Asian spices.
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Prince Henry died in 1460, but Portugese sailor
Bartholomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of
Africa, opening the door to India. He named the
tip of Africa the "Cape of Storms" after the
violent seas he found, but King John II renamed
it the "Cape of Good Hope", probably out of fear
that no other sailor would head for the Cape of
Storms.
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In 1497, Portugese navigator Vasco da Gama
followed Dias's path, rounded the Cape of Good
Hope, and after a 10 month oversea voyage, he
reached the great spice port of Calicut on
India's west coast. Da Gama and the Portugese
became extremely wealthy from the spices they
carried away from India.
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Christopher Columbus thought he had his own new
say to get to Asian spices from Europe. He knew
the earth was round, so he decided to sail west
and go all the way around the world, where he
thought he would bump into the East Indies (part
of Indonesia today.)
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He didn't know that two continents stood between
him and Asia, and that the world was a whole lot
bigger than he thought.
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Columbus was an Italian, from Genoa, but no one
in Italy would sponsor his voyage. The rulers of
Spain, however, decided they would finance his
travels, and Ferdinand and Isabella supplied him
with three ships, crew, equipment, and supplies.
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On August 3, 1492, he set out, expecting to sail
for a few weeks before hitting Asia. Wrong. On
October 12, finally, with supplies running out
and a mutinous crew, Columbus spotted land. Only
it wasn't Asia. It was an unknown continent.
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Well, unknown to everyone except the Native
Americans.
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Columbus spent several months exploring today's
Caribbean islands, then returned to Spain a hero.
He returned three other times in following
years, but never was convinced that he had found
new continents. He died believing he had just
found a new way to the Eastern Asia.
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An Italian sea captain named Amerigo Vespucci
sailed to Brazil a little later, and wrote a
journal describing his trip. In 1507, Martin
Waldseemuller, a German cartographer, used
Vespucci's journal to make a map of the area, and
labeled it "America."
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Portugese nobleman Ferdinand Magellan set out in
1519 to find a way to reach the Pacific Ocean.
His 5 ships and 234 men sailed to South America,
then eased along the coastline, looking for any
passage to the Pacific. He discovered a route
through the broken islands at the tip of South
America that led him into the Pacific. This
passage is called the Straits of Magellan to this
day.
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Ol' Magellan's crew was satisfied and ready to go
home. Magellan, however, told them that three
more weeks' sailing would take them across the
Pacific to the East Indies. Wrong. For nearly
4 months the ships sailed across the vast
Pacific. Finally in March 1521, the ships
reached the Philippines, where Magellan was
killed.
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In a fight with Filipino natives, Magellan's
helmet was knocked off his head. He was then hit
in the face and the arm by bamboo spears.
Magellan stabbed a native with his lance, and
tried to draw his sword, but found his sword arm
useless from the spear wound. His left leg was
cut by a native's sword, and he fell face first
onto the ground. The natives then dog piled the
captain, finishing him with spears and swords.
The survivors got the heck out of there.
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On September 8, 1522, nearly 3 years after
setting out, the survivors reached Spain. What
were the survivors? One ship and 18 men. But
these 18 men were the first to circumnavigate, or
sail around, the world. One of the survivors,
Antonio Pigafetta, said "I believe of a certainty
that no one will ever again make such a voyage."
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And Columbus probably wasnt even the first
European to discover America. Icelander Leif
Ericsson is known to have built a settlement in
Newfoundland in Canada around the year 1,000.
Thats 500 years before Columbus set sail.
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And artifacts found in America hint at the
possibility that Chinese explorer Admiral Zheng
he sailed to and explored North America in 1421.
He may even have traded with the Cherokee.
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So as you see, History isn't set in stone. It
changes from day to day. That's why we study it.
Who knows who will make the next discovery that
changes everything we know about the events that
led us here? Maybe you.