What did Spanish explorers discover in the western Atlantic?

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THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHER experts believed that sailing west across the Atlantic to Asia was literally impossible. The European discovery of America required someone bold enough to believe that the experts were wrong. That person was Christopher Columbus. His explorations inaugurated a geographic revolution that forever altered Europeans’ understanding of the world and its peoples, including themselves. Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean initiated a thriving exchange between the people, ideas, cultures, and institutions of the Old and New Worlds that continues to this day.

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Spanish Tapestry
This detail from a lavish sixteenth-century tapestry depicts Columbus (kneeling) receiving a box of jewels from Queen Isabella (whose husband, King Ferdinand, stands slightly behind her) in appreciation for his voyages to the New World. © Julio Conoso/Corbis Sygma.

1492

  • – Christopher Columbus lands in the Caribbean and encounters the Tainos.
  • – Columbian exchange begins.

1493

  • – Columbus makes second voyage to the New World.

1494

  • – Portugal and Spain sign the Treaty of Tordesillas.

1497

  • – John Cabot searches for the Northwest Passage.

1513

  • – Vasco Núñez de Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama.

1519

  • – Ferdinand Magellan sets out to sail around the world.