Voyages of Christopher Columbus
In 1492, a Spanish-based transatlantic maritime expedition led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus encountered the Americas, continents which were virtually unknown in Europe, Asia and Africa and were outside the Old World political and economic system. The four voyages of Columbus led to the widespread knowledge that a continent existed west of Europe and east of Asia. This breakthrough in geographical knowledge inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, colonization, biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade, whose effects and consequences persist to the present, and are sometimes cited as the start of the modern era.
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