Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Christopher Columbus [b] (/ k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ə s /; [2] between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian [3] [c] explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa [3] [4] who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas.
Columbus referred to the West Indies as the Indias Occidentales ('West Indies') in his 1502 Book of Privileges, calling them "unknown to all the world". He gathered information later that year from the natives of Central America which seem to further indicate that he realized he had found a new land.
Reenactment of a Viking landing in L'Anse aux Meadows. Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. [1]
Throughout millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout the rest of North and South America. Exactly when the first people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. [15] One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago. [20]
These groups are generally believed to have been isolated from the people of the "Old World" until the coming of Europeans in the 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus. The ancestors of today's American Indigenous peoples were the Paleo-Indians; they were hunter-gatherers who migrated into North America.
The treaty of New Echota, [181] was enacted, which stated that the United States "would give Cherokee land west of the Mississippi in exchange for $5,000,000". [180] According to Jeffrey Ostler, "Of the 80,000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s, between 12,000 and 17,000 perished."
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemisphere, from the late 15th century on.