Discovery & Exploration

1492 : An ongoing voyage - An exhibit of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. - The date (1492) and the name (Columbus) provoke many questions related to the linking of very different parts of the world, the Western Hemisphere and the Mediterranean. What was life like in those areas before 1492? What spurred European expansion? How did European, African and American peoples react to each other? What were some of the immediate results of these contacts? 1492: AN ONGOING VOYAGE addresses such questions by examining the rich mixture of societies co- existing in five areas of this hemisphere before European arrival. It then surveys the polyglot Mediterranean world at a dynamic turning point in its development.

Conquistadors - Based on four TV programs for PBS, Michael Wood looks at Cortes, Pizarro, Orellana and Cabeza de Vaca, four conquistadors in the period 1500-1550, and their interaction with the native Americans.

Latitude : the art and science of fifteenth-century navigation - Information on ships, sailing, ocean currents and weather, latitude, longitude, charts, compasses, magnetism, and traditional astronomy.

Nineteenth Century Exploration of Australia - Created by Dr. Charles H. Smith and Jennifer Rakestraw, and built around an Australian map that details the routes taken by 19th century explorers of the Autralian interior.

Silk Road Seattle - A collaborative public education project using the "Silk Road" theme to explore cultural interaction across Eurasia from the beginning of the Common Era (A. D.) to the Sixteenth Century.

Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/s/1357.aspx