Age of Exploration - Key Terms

Vocabulary flashcards covering key explorers, routes, and places mentioned in the notes on the first contacts between indigenous peoples of the Americas and Europeans.

Age of Exploration

A period when European powers sought new sea routes and lands across oceans, fueling global trade, empire-building, and contact with indigenous peoples.

Bartolomeu Dias

Portuguese explorer who sailed around the Southern Tip of Africa in 1488, opening sea routes to India and Asia.

Vasco da Gama

Portuguese explorer who reached India by sea in 1498, establishing a direct route between Europe and Asia and linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Amerigo Vespucci

Italian explorer who realized the lands he encountered were not Asia; the continents of North and South America are named after him.

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese explorer whose 1519 voyage sought a western route to Asia and discovered a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific (Strait of Magellan).

Strait of Magellan

Narrow sea passage at the southern tip of South America that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Christopher Columbus

Genoese navigator sailing for Spain who landed in the Bahamas in 1492 while seeking a westward route to Asia; completed four voyages across the Atlantic by 1504.

The Bahamas

Caribbean islands where Columbus first landed during his 1492 voyage.

Caribbean Sea

Region of the western Atlantic where early European exploration and settlement in the Americas began.

The Americas

Continents of North and South America, named after Amerigo Vespucci, site of indigenous civilizations and European contact.

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Native peoples of North, Central, and South America who suffered consequences from European arrival and colonization.

European colonization

The expansion of European empires into the Americas and Africa through exploration, settlement, and governance.