When June arrived, and the ice had still not loosened its grip on the ship, scurvy-ridden survivors took two small boats out into the sea. He built new boats and explored some 870 miles (1,400 kilometres) of the Angara, finally reaching Yeniseysk and discovering that the Angara (a Buryat name) and Upper Tunguska (Verkhnyaya Tunguska, as initially known by Russians) are one and the same river. Fourteen of his crew died; only Urdaneta and Felipe de Salcedo, nephew of López de Legazpi, had strength enough to cast the anchors. In 1659–65 Kurbat Ivanov was the next head of Anadyrsky ostrog after Semyon Dezhnyov. There, in what came to be called the "Gold Coast" in what is today Ghana, a thriving alluvial gold trade was found among the natives and Arab and Berber traders. From Trinidad he proceeded to Tabasco and won a battle against the natives. From China the major exports were silk and porcelain, adapted to meet European tastes. [22] Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction,[clarification needed] Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the Pax Mongolica allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. [189] The spent silver, suddenly spread throughout a previously cash-starved Europe, caused widespread inflation. Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar and traveller who had asked to be on board and become a strict assistant of Magellan, kept an accurate journal that become the main source for much of what we know about this voyage. They built boats and in 1645 sailed along the Sea of Okhotsk coast to the Ulya River and spent the next winter in the huts that had been built by Ivan Moskvitin six years earlier. Spices were among the most expensive and demanded products of the Middle Ages, as they were used in medieval medicine,[43] religious rituals, cosmetics, perfumery, as well as food additives and preservatives. He successfully carried out the voyage to collect taxes from Zabaykalye Buryats, becoming the first Russian to step in Buryatia. Additionally, it saw the introduction of new human populations, including an increase in the trade and sale of slaves and the use of slavery. [170] Trade with European powers and the Japanese brought in massive amounts of silver, which then replaced copper and paper banknotes as the common medium of exchange in China. The members of these expeditions, the "conquistadors", came from a variety of backgrounds including artisans, merchants, clergy, lesser nobility and freed slaves. The introduction of agricultural practices and crops was so successful that some areas now rely on introduced foods as major dietary staples (this includes potatoes in Europe and manioc and corn in Africa). Contrary to how we’ve mythologized Columbus, European Exploration began long before he set sail in 1492. Sometimes one motive inspires the promoters of discovery, and another motive may inspire the individuals who carry out the search. In 1660 he sailed from Anadyr Bay to Cape Dezhnyov. Despite several significant transoceanic and transcontinental explorations by European civilizations in the preceding centuries, the precise geography of the Earth outside of Europe was largely unknown to Europeans before the 15th century, when technological advances (especially in sea travel) as well as the rise of colonialism, mercantilism, and a host of other social, cultural, and economic changes made it possible to organize large-scale exploratory expeditions to uncharted parts of the globe. In the mid-16th century the Tsardom of Russia conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus annexing the entire Volga Region and opening the way to the Ural Mountains. [163] They are now important staple foods, replacing native African crops. It also provided a platform for cosmopolitan discourses, which took place in locations such as the ships of the Ming treasure fleet, the Ming capitals of Nanjing as well as Beijing, and the banquet receptions organized by the Ming court for foreign representatives. After wintering in the James Bay, Hudson tried to press on with his voyage in the spring of 1611, but his crew mutinied and they cast him adrift. That year John Cabot, also a commissioned Italian, got letters patent from King Henry VII of England. It was depicted on the mid-16th-century Dieppe maps, where its coastline appeared just south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail. Further changing the mercantile situation in the Eastern Mediterranean was the waning of Byzantine naval power following the death of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, whose dynasty had made several notable treaties and concessions with Italian traders, permitting the use of Byzantine Christian ports. In 1512, to reward Juan Ponce de León for exploring Puerto Rico in 1508, king Ferdinand urged him to seek these new lands. However, very soon the exploration and colonization of the huge territories of Siberia was resumed, led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. The travels were reported by Ma Huan, a Muslim voyager and translator who accompanied Zheng He on three of the seven expeditions, his account published as the Yingya Shenglan (Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores) (1433). [148] The vessels were separated by "terrible whirlwinds" in the Norwegian Sea and Willoughby sailed into a bay near the present border between Finland and Russia. In 1518 Velázquez gave the mayor of the capital of Cuba, Hernán Cortés, the command of an expedition to secure the interior of Mexico but, due to an old gripe between them, revoked the charter. [132] These expeditions were hoping to find an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade. In 1527 Hernán Cortés fitted out a fleet to find new lands in the "South Sea" (Pacific Ocean), asking his cousin Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón to take charge. The Town Council of Amsterdam purchased and outfitted two small ships, captained by Jan Rijp and Jacob van Heemskerk, to search for the elusive channel, under the command of Barents. In 1482 the Congo River was explored by Diogo Cão,[69] who in 1486 continued to Cape Cross (modern Namibia). Portugal's neighbouring fellow Iberian rival, Castile, had begun to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the west African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal Iberian politics and the repelling of Islamic invasion attempts and raids through most of the 15th century. As shipping between Seville and the West Indies grew, knowledge of the Caribbean islands, Central America and the northern coast of South America grew. They founded Anadyrsk and were stranded there, until Stadukhin found them, coming from Kolyma by land. European exploration opened new ways of trade to Asia as well as India, that helped other nations to source products quickly and make high profits. However, small bodies of conquistadors, with large armies of Indigenous Americans groups, managed to conquer these states. Land was sighted on 12 October 1492, and Columbus called the island (now The Bahamas) San Salvador, in what he thought to be the "East Indies". The Age of Exploration facilitated the exchange of ideas and religions between the hemispheres, but also resulted in the spread of communicable diseases, which severely reduced and, in some cases, wiped out some populations. In the “Cultural” exchange, they traded technology, ideas and goods. These overland journeys had little immediate effect. These were Pomors from the Russian North, who already had been making fur trade with Mangazeya in the north of the Western Siberia for quite a long time. In 1595, merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, having travelled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, published a travel report in Amsterdam, the "Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" ("Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East"). Between 1405 and 1421 the third Ming emperor Yongle sponsored a series of long range tributary missions in the Indian Ocean under the command of admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho). [86] From the east coast, the fleet then turned eastward to resume the journey to the southern tip of Africa and India. They reached the Southern Hemisphere and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé and Príncipe and Elmina on the Gold Coast in 1471. In 1154, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created a description of the world and a world map, the Tabula Rogeriana, at the court of King Roger II of Sicily,[15][16] but still Africa was only partially known to either Christians, Genoese and Venetians, or the Arab seamen, and its southern extent unknown. In the next decade several captains at the service of Prince Henry—including the Genoese Antonio da Noli and Venetian Alvise Cadamosto—discovered the remaining islands which were occupied during the 15th century. [112] In 1525, Charles I of Spain sent another expedition westward to colonize the Maluku Islands, claiming that they were in his zone of the Treaty of Tordesillas. 1650 – Stadukhin and Semen Motora travel from the Kolyma, across the Anyuyskiy Range, to Anadyrsk. [80] Both explorations are noted in the 1502 Cantino planisphere. [184][185] The Chinese workmanship impressed many. In particular, they were discovered by voyages launched by the command of Prince Henry the Navigator. Cortés learned about the wealthy Aztec Empire through La Malinche. It is responsible for influencing European culture, initiating globalization, and introducing colonialism around the world. Among the vanquished was Marina (La Malinche), his future mistress, who knew both (Aztec) Nahuatl language and Maya, becoming a valuable interpreter and counsellor. They gave them diseases that they had not been exposed to before and this wiped out 50–90% of their population. [128] After spending some time on the islands, Legazpi sent Urdaneta back to find a better return route. He charted the Amur in his Draft of the Amur river. [73] Before returning to Spain, he kidnapped some ten to twenty-five natives and took them back with him. [28] In that year a first Atlantic exploration attempt, merchant brothers Vadino and Ugolino Vivaldi sailed from Genoa with two galleys but disappeared off the Moroccan coast, feeding the fears of oceanic travel. After marching for two months, they approached Atahualpa. Knowledge about the Atlantic African coast was fragmented and derived mainly from old Greek and Roman maps based on Carthaginian knowledge, including the time of Roman exploration of Mauritania. [171] Although the bulk of imports to China were silver, the Chinese also purchased New World crops from the Spanish Empire. [25][page needed], There are a few accounts of merchants from North Africa and the Mediterranean region who traded in the Indian Ocean in late medieval times. [38] For the first time in its history, the maritime region from China to Africa was under the dominance of a single imperial power and thereby allowed for the creation of a cosmopolitan space.[42]. The Cossacks had to withdraw from Siberia completely, but thanks to Yermak's having explored all the main river routes in West Siberia, Russians successfully reclaimed all his conquests just several years later.