Christopher Columbus: Exploration And Colonization Of America

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. His many voyages paved the way for European exploration. But did Columbus really discover the Americas on his own? No, it is known that millions of people lived in the Americas before Columbus. For most of human history, archaeologists have found modern humans originating from Africa about 400,000 years ago (Of The People, 4). During the last ice age, glaciers expanded that the sea level dropped and created a land bridge between Siberia in Asia and Alaska in America. Many humans that were hunting big game traveled along the new bridge into America. This was the very beginning to a whole new world of trading, exploration and colonizing. Between 1000 and 1650 multiple events occurred in Europe that provided a gateway to exploration and colonization of America. According to James Oakes, “ In the fifteenth century, for the first time, Europeans had the necessary technology to be able to travel far from home in numbers”(Of The People, 9). These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the …show more content…
At the very beginning Columbus believed he could make it from Asia to Europe however throughout his long travel and encounters with armies they never made it. After the long terrible travels Columbus sighted an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. Thinking he had found islands near Japan, he sailed on until he reached Cuba and later Haiti. During Columbus’s voyages he searched for pearls, gold, silver, fur, food, spices and many new found items to return to Spain with. Many of the products that Christopher Columbus found were unknown to Europe–coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, and potatoes. Columbus also encountered what he had called “dark-skinned native peoples”, Christopher Columbus and his men used and abused the native tribes forcing them to convert to Christianity, seek their riches, and gain access to their