Introduction to The Age of Exploration

Long ago, in the year 1491, most people in Europe did not know that North America and South America were there. And the people who lived in the Americas did not know that Europe was there either.

Then, in 1492, everything changed. That year, a man named Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. He landed by accident on some islands near the Americas. This was the start of something called the Age of Exploration. (Exploration means going to new places to discover them.)

News about what Columbus found spread fast. Soon, many men from Spain wanted to find treasure too. Spanish explorers, called conquistadors, went looking for silver and gold. One conquistador was named Francisco Vasquez de Coronado. These explorers pushed through swamps. They walked across deserts. They explored new lands and took them over.

A few years later, other countries wanted to explore too. John Cabot explored for England. Henry Hudson explored for both England and the Netherlands. Samuel de Champlain explored for France.

These explorers changed the world. They connected Europe to the Americas. Now you will read about some of their trips.

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The Lure of Spices

Many explorers from Europe hoped to find gold and other valuable metals. It makes sense that they wanted gold — it's still valuable today. But did you know they also wanted to find spices? You might wonder, "Why would explorers care so much about spices?"

Here's why: things that are scarce (hard to find) usually cost a lot of money. That's why gold is expensive today. It's also why spices were expensive 500 years ago. Back then, spices were scarce in Europe. Some spices cost almost as much as gold!

Look at red peppercorns. A cook can drop a few whole peppercorns into soup. Or a cook can grind them into tiny bits with a spice grinder. Either way, they make the soup taste spicier.

White peppercorns come from the very same plant as red peppercorns. They start out red. But their outer skin is peeled off, showing the white part inside. Cooks can use white peppercorns just like red ones.

Cloves are dried flower buds. Cooks use them to flavor meat, stew, some teas, and pumpkin pie. Cloves are very strong, so cooks must use just a little. Too many cloves can overpower the other flavors in a dish.

Peppercorns can't grow in Europe. They only grow in warm, wet places, like India.

Today, getting peppercorns from India is easy. Airplanes and ships carry huge amounts of them. You can walk into a store and buy almost any spice you want. A jar of cloves might cost just one or two dollars.

Five hundred years ago, people in Europe were not so lucky. The world wasn't as connected as it is now.

If someone in Spain wanted pepper, they had to pay a lot. Why? Because the pepper had to travel all the way from India — carried by donkeys, mules, and camels over land.

The same was true for cloves and cinnamon. These plants could not grow in Europe. They had to be imported — brought in — from far-away places like the Indies.

Most spices come from a plant's flowers, fruits, or seeds. Cinnamon is different — it comes from the bark of a tree! Workers cut strips of bark off the tree. They remove the tough outer bark and keep the soft inner bark. Then they roll it up like a little scroll. These rolled-up pieces are called cinnamon sticks. Cinnamon can also be ground into powder, just like pepper.

Do you like cinnamon on your toast? How much do you like it? Would you sail across an ocean just to get some? That is exactly what many European explorers were willing to do.