1400–1650

In 1400, the world's major civilizations lived apart from each other. They maintained virtually no continuous contact. Indeed, some very advanced cultures were completely unknown to others. Probably the most isolated were the Amerindian civilizations since oceans separated their continent from Europe, Asia and Africa, whose own cultures at least had knowledge that the others existed. Europeans had a “feeling” that there were aspects of the world they did not, but ought to know. For years Christians in Europe had believed that a mythical king, Prester John ruled a powerful Christian nation in the heart of Africa. One of Prince Henry the Navigator's aims had been to join forces with him and launch a telling assault against the power of Islam. Generations of Europeans had considered the “islands of the Atlantic” shown on some of their maps to mean that great cultures and perhaps spectacular treasures existed somewhere beyond the known world. Christian lore described voyages to the north and west by Irish monks, most notably that of St. Brendan, in the sixth century, which had led to contact with marvelous people (other Christian monks) and strange places. Closer to their own era were the exploits of the Norsemen, whose adventures had been narrated in sagas with which some Northern Europeans may have been familiar. The Vikings had sailed to Iceland in the latter half of the ninth century (where they encountered at least several hundred Irish monks who had lived there ever since the eighth century). They lived in Greenland a century after that, and at the start of the eleventh century, under Leif Ericson, they attempted to settle a colony in Newfoundland (which they called Vinland).