Africans were an important component of the forced labor landscape, producing sugar and tobacco for European markets. Europeans viewed Africans as non-Christians, which they considered a justification for enslavement
This shows the motivations behind enslavement.
He and his men were astonished by the incredibly sophisticated causeways, aqueducts, gardens, markets, and temples in the city,
In the text you can see the men were surprised to see civilization more complex than their own.
Hernán Cortés hoped to gain hereditary privilege for his family, tribute payments and labor from natives, and an annual pension for his service to the crown.
The men often used exploration as a route to a better life.
Also in 1565, they established the first permanent European settlement in North America at St. Augustine in Florida. Florida would remain a Spanish territory most of the time until the early nineteenth century and several wars were fought between Spanish Florida and the British colonies to its north, which may help explain why St. Augustine is not better remembered as the first European settlement.
This gives a brief overview of the early colonial period, comparing Spanish success with English expansion.
Columbus believed he could chart a westward route to India, which could be used to expand Spanish trade and spread Christianity.
This highlights his plan and goals for his exploration.
harem
What's that?
women had both power and influence.
I wonder what changed this to the point of when women barely had any rights.
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English, Dutch, and French explorers expected to discover the same in North America. What they found instead were small, scattered communities,
Did they think they were going to be the first to discover the land?
Since there were no horses or oxen in the Americas to pull carts, the Inca, like all other pre-Columbian American societies, did not use axle-mounted wheels for transportation
How come if they had boats and other technologies for travel did they not bring animals over?
cannibalism.
Did cannibalism start here?
Tenochtitlán, admiring both its spotless cleanliness and the size of its markets
I wonder how some communities were so much more advanced than others.
Pyramid of the Sun (which is two hundred feet high) and the Pyramid of the Moon (one hundred and fifty feet high). Near the Templ
I wonder where the original idea of a pyramid originated from. And its crazy to me how buildings like apartment complexes have been around for so long.
Most important for our knowledge of these peoples, Mesoamericans created the only known written language in the Western Hemisphere.
Was this one of the earliest written languages documented?
Sea levels were about 360 feet lower than they are at present,
I wonder what caused sea levels to rise to drastically over time?