Famous european explorers that came to america in early

European powers employed sailors and geographers to map and explore North America with the goal of economic, religious and military expansion. The combative and rapid nature of this exploration is the result of a series of countering actions by neighboring European nations to ensure no single country had garnered enough wealth and power from the Americas to militarily tip the scales over on the European continent.

It spanned the late 15th to early 17th centuries, and consisted primarily of expeditions funded by Spain, England, France, and Portugal. See also the European colonization of the Americas. According to the Sagas of Icelanders , Norse sailors often called Vikings from Iceland first settled Greenland in the s.

Famous explorers for kids

Erik the Red explored and settled southwestern Greenland , which he named to entice potential Icelandic settlers, eventually establishing the Eastern and Western Settlements , which were abandoned around L'Anse aux Meadows , an archaeological site on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland , and a second site in southwestern Newfoundland, are the only known sites of a Norse village in North America outside of Greenland.

These sites are notable for their possible connections with the attempted colony of Vinland established by Leif Erikson in There are also some claims that Polynesians have met South Americans, including evidence such as Sweet potato cultivation in Polynesia , long before the Spanish and Portuguese arrivals of the islands, linguistic evidence, and genetic evidence.

However, the theory is still heavily debated in the academic cycles because of other evidence contradicting it. The Vinland map surfaced in and is claimed, though widely discredited, to be a 15th-century map depicting the Norse colony of Vinland. The Viking voyages did not become common knowledge in the Old World , and Europeans remained unaware of the existence of the Americas as a whole, until when Spain discovered America to the rest of the world.

Many expeditions were launched from European nations in search of a Northwest Passage to East Asia or "the Indies" as the region was called in order to establish a shorter trade route to China than the Silk Road , a trade route which had become desperately needed and yet exacerbated by the fall of Constantinople. Also, the Castilian crown needed an alternative to the Portuguese controlled eastern maritime trade route around Africa to India and East Asia.

Columbus under the Spanish flag rediscovered and explored much of the Lesser Antilles in his second voyage then discovered both Trinidad and Tobago on his third voyage whilst skirting the northern South American coast. His fourth voyage was spent scanning the Central American coast. Though the exact location of his discovery remains disputed, the Canadian and United Kingdom governments' official position is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland.