Abraham Zacuto
(c. 1450–1515?),the foremost writer on astronomy in fifteenth-century Castile. Zacuto was born in Salamanca, Spain, to Jewish parents. His principal work, the Almanach perpetuum coelestium motuum, ...
Alonso de Ojeda
(1466/70–1515/16),Spanish explorer. He was born in Cuenca and in September 1493 sailed with Columbus on his second voyage, during which he participated in the conquest of Hispaniola (1493–5). In ...
Alonso Vélez de Mendoza
(d. before 1512),Spanish explorer of the Brazilian coast. Although of noble birth and a knight commander of the Order of Santiago, Vélez was in reality an impoverished and indebted ...
America
The name was apparently coined in M. Waldseemüller Cosmographiae Introductio (1507) and coming from Americus, modern Latin form of the name of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512), who ...
Amerigo Vespucci
(1451–1512),Italian merchant and explorer. He travelled to the New World, reaching the coast of Venezuela on his first voyage (1499–1500) and exploring the Brazilian coastline in 1501–2. The Latin ...
animal finds in the east and west
Archaeozoology reveals both sacred and secular human-animal relationships, adding scientific evidence to written and pictorial sources. Most finds represent opportunistic exploitation of cattle, ...
Antilia
Along with real islands, medieval cartographers included many imaginary and mythical islands on their maps of the Atlantic Ocean. Antilia is one of these imaginary islands, located beyond the Azores. ...
azimuth compass
A compass designed to observe the value of the local magnetic variation. Early navigators had no knowledge of the phenomenon, and it was not until the 15th century that it became clear that the ...
Azores
A Portuguese island group in the Atlantic Ocean. There are no written records alluding to the Azores in the ancient world, but the discovery of Carthaginian coins implies that at ...
Bartolomé Columbus
(c. 1461–c. 1515),Genoese explorer and brother of Christopher Columbus. The younger brother of Christopher Columbus, Bartolomé Colón (the Castilian version of his name; the name is Bartolomeo Colombo ...
Bartolomé de Las Casas
(1474–1566)Spanish missionary priest, the “Apostle of the Indies”. He was a Dominican friar who criticized the conquest and exploitation of the Indians of the Spanish colonies. He had himself ...
bergantina
A small Mediterranean rowing and sailing vessel of the 14th–16th centuries, which could be considered as the Mediterranean counterpart of the English pinnace of the same period. Bergantinas were ...
Bermuda Triangle
An area of the western Atlantic Ocean where a large number of ships and aircraft are said to have mysteriously disappeared; the name is recorded from the 1960s.
Bristol Voyages
The question of whether ships sailing from Bristol reached America before Christopher Columbus's celebrated voyage of 1492 has long exercised historians. The evidence is indirect but intriguing. For ...
caravel
Originally a Portuguese fishing boat with lateen sails for local trade; but by the start of the 14th century it became the name of a small merchantman with lateen sails on two masts, a larger version ...
Catholic Kings
Isabella, queen of Castile from 1474 to 1504, and her husband Ferdinand, king of Aragon from 1479 to 1516, each enjoyed a long reign that allowed them to pacify and ...
Catholic Monarchs
Isabella (1451–1504) was the daughter of King John II of Castile and his second wife, Isabella of Portugal. John died when his daughter was three years old, and Isabella was ...
Central America
Central American children's books reflect the history and culture of the bridge of seven nations (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) that connects North and ...
chart
A map primarily intended for navigation, one of the earliest being the plane chart, hence plain sailing. In very general terms, two types of nautical chart are used at sea, the straightforward ...
