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Notes on video lecture:
Columbus: Last Man of the Middle Ages, Vespucci: First Man of the Modern Age
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
scientific, Persians, obliged, Ottoman, Scandinavia, empty, Britain, conquer, Middle, sustained, Japan, Asia, German, natural, Pinta, empires, complete, around, Brazil, Zheng, colonize, data, 1602, uncharted, compete
early European maps (e.g. 1459) left no part of the world was                    and gave you the impression of familiarity with the world
in the 15th century Europeans began to draw maps with many            spaces, indicating that they were ignorant of large parts of the world
1492 Christopher Columbus' voyage was based his "                " world maps from the Middle Ages
when the            reached the first island in the Bahamas, Columbus thought he was somewhere in the Indonesian islands or India and so called the people Indians
Columbus never realized or admitted that he discovered a completely unknown continent
Columbus died a man of the              Ages
Amerigo Vespucci
first demonstrated that              and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts
Italian sailor started to sail in 1500
1504: texts argued something revolutionary
new lands were of a new continent unknown to philosophers, kings, and the Bible
Martin Waldseemüller (1470-1520)
             cartographer
called the new continent "America" based on Amerigo Vespucci
the discovery of America was what really began the                      revolution because it taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions
it                the Europeans to start searching for new knowledge quickly
if Spain and Portugal wanted to control the new territories, they would have to gather enormous amounts of new         
even their maps with their blank spaces admitted that they didn't know what was out there
this was an admittance that there are important things that we don't know
the European explore-and-               expeditions are so familiar to us, we tend to overlook how unique they were
nothing like it had ever happened before in history
long distance campaigns of conquest are not a                undertaking even for empires
most empires were so busy with local conflicts with their neighbors, they never occupied themselves with long-distance discovery
at the most, empires would conquer familiar lands              them
Rome conquered wider and wider areas to defend their outlying areas, but Romans wouldn't have sailed directly to               , explore it and conquer it
even Alexander the Great's campaigns had the goal to take over a known and existing empire, the                 
closest parallel were the Chinese in the 15th century, their exploration of the Indian Ocean including East Africa
           He had 300 ships and 30,000 sailors compared to Columbus' 3 ships
Zheng He explored the ocean, but he did not try to conquer or                  the countries he visited
after Zheng He, not explorer of his ambition never set sail again from a Chinese port
prove that Europe did not enjoy any technological advantage at the time, but what they did have was                    and unparalleled ambition
the Romans never had any interest in conquering                        or India
the Persians never attempted to conquer Madagascar or Spain
the Chinese learned fairly quickly about European's new discoveries, but they continued to believe that the world revolved around Asia, and so they didn't               
even countries as small as Scotland tried to send out ships to conquer new lands in the Americas, but not one Chinese, Indian,               , or Arab ship was sent to conquer new lands in America, they simply had no interest
the first time that a non-European power sent an expedition to the American continent was in World War II when            sent an expedition to Alaska that managed to conquer two small islands, capturing 10 U.S. soldiers
so for 300 years after Columbus, Europeans could fight among themselves for the new lands in the newly discovered continents
it was the wealth that the Europeans gathered in the New World that enabled them to eventually compete against          as an equal, and when the Asian countries realized this, it was to late.
the first world map in China that showed America was published in         , and even that map was published by a European missionary
the first important science was geography, as it gave Europeans accurate knowledge of new lands and oceans
other areas of science followed, and in this way,                opened the way for science, and science opened the way for empires

Ideas and Concepts:

Via today's History of Humankind class: "Columbus never realized or admitted that he had discovered a completely unknown continent. He had based his knowledge of the world on hundreds of years of maps. To understand Columbus' complete disbelief that he had encountered a new continent, you would have to imagine that, after Apollo 11 had completed its lunar landing and returned to earth, that people began suggesting to the astronauts that they had actually landed on another moon that had never been detected. It simply didn't fit into Columbus' understanding of the world, and he died thinking he had reached India, a man of the Middle Ages."
Via tonight's History of Humankind class: "The discovery of America was what really began the scientific revolution because it taught Europeans to favor present observations over past traditions. In this respect, Amerigo Vespucci was the first modern, scientific man, as he was the first person to have the courage to admit that there was a huge continent lying out there that no philosopher, no king, and no religious wise man had ever known of, and if Spain or Portugal or any other country wanted to control these vast, unknown territories, they would have to gather enormous amounts of new data about the geography, the climate, the animals, the people, and the languages of the continent. And thus, science was born out of the admittance of extreme ignorance, but ignorance combined with sustained ambition to gradually replace it with knowledge and power."
The Context of History and Our Extended Human Family
How Walking Upright Led to Better Social and Cooperative Skills
The Importance of Fire and Cooking
Why Did Other Human Species Become Extinct?
The Cognitive Revolution and the Beginning of Human History
The Language of Homo Sapiens
How Fictive Language Enabled Larger Social Groups
The Power of Imagined Realities
How the Ability to Tell Stories Enabled Humans to Cooperate in Massive Groups
The Cognitive Revolution and the Variety of Human Communities
Spiritual Beliefs of Early Humans
Politics and Warfare of Pre-Agricultural Societies
45,000 Years Ago: Human's Decimation of Australia's Large Mammals
14,000 BC: Human Migration to the Americas
Agriculture: The Good and the Bad
10,000 BC: Agricultural Revolution
The Origins of Agriculture
The Code of Hammurabi and Other Imagined Realities
Inter-Subjective Reality and Romantic Consumerism
The Human Brain's Outsourcing of Mathematics
Unjust and Imagined Hierarchies
Imagined Hierarchies in History
Culturally Defined Gender
Three Theories of Gender Domination
The Direction of Humankind: Global Unity
The Essence of Money
The History of Money
The Historical Definition of Empire
The Relationship between Science, European Imperialism and Capitalism
Science, Capitalism and European Imperialism
Columbus: Last Man of the Middle Ages, Vespucci: First Man of the Modern Age
European Empires, Science, and Capitalism
How Capitalism is Based on Trust in the Future
On the Interdependence of Science and Capitalism
How Capitalism Enabled Small European Countries to Explore and Conquer the World
The Relationship Between Capitalism, the Slave Trade, and Free Market Forces
Industrialization, Energy and Raw Materials
The Second Agricultural Revolution and its Effect on Animal Treatment
The Ethics of Capitalism and Consumerism
On Limitless Energy Resources and the Hegemony of Modern Time Schedules
State/Market vs. Family/Community
Humankind's Rigid and Violent Past, and Flexible and Peaceful Present
Reasons for Our Current Unprecedented Era of International Peace
Three Theories on the History of Happiness
Psychological and Biological Happiness
Measuring Human Happiness
The Future of Cyborgs and Robots
What Do We Want to Want?