Additional Vocabulary. Check the pronunciation
Alexandria
Alsace
Antwerp
Assyria
Babylon
Baltimore
Barcelona
Basel/Basle
Basra
Bavaria
Bern
Bombay
Bonn
Brandenburg
Bremen
Brittany
Bruges
Burgundy
Byzantium
Cadiz
Calais
Cannes
Carthage
Cologne
Corinth
Dresden
Geneva
Genoa
Ghent
Hamburg
Havre
Hellas
Hesse
Hiroshima
Kyoto
Leghorn
Leipzig
Liege
Lorraine
Lyons
Magdeburg
Mainz
Marseilles
Mecca
Medina
Memphis
Mesopotamia
Milan
Miletus
Montreal
Munich
Nagasaki
Naples
Normandy
Nuremberg
Osaka
Palermo
Phoenicia
Potsdam
Prussia
Rhineland-Palatinate
Quebec
Reims
Rotterdam
Saarland
Salonika
Saxony
Syracuse
Schleswig-Holstein
Stuttgart
Thebes
Thrace
Thuringia
Toledo
Torino
Transylvania
Tripoli
Troy
Vancuver
Vatican
Venice
Versailles
Wiesbaden
Zurich
UNIT 7
GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES
VOCABULARY.
Argonaut
bullion
caravel
carrack
compass
dead wind, tail wind, trade wind
displacement/tonnage
expedition, organize/outfit an expedition
explorer/pioneer/pathfinder;path-breaker
furs/peltry
high-performance ship
ivory
land reclamation
Levant (Левант – общее назв. стран вост. части Средиземного м.)
merchant
mutiny
navigation
pilot
sailing-ship
sailor/seaman/navigator
scurvy, smallpox, plague
seafaring
squadron/fleet
stronghold
to anchor
to beat against the wind
to circumnavigate
to explore, exploration
to make boards
to tack
trade routes
tradesman
walrus tusk
windward/leeward side
Read the text about the Age of Discovery.
Age of Discovery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery
The Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which Europeans explored the world by ocean searching for trading partners and particular trade goods. The most desired trading goods were gold, silver and spices. Western Europeans used new sailing ship technologies to seek a viable trade route to Asia for valuable spices which would be uncontested by Mediterranean powers. In terms of shipping advances, the most important developments were the creation of the carrack and caravel designs in Portugal. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm Mediterranean, Baltic or North Sea and sail safely on the open Atlantic.
Exploration by Land
The prelude to the Age of Exploration was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. While the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, the Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia creating trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. These were almost all Italians as the trade between Europe and the Middle East was almost completely controlled by traders from the Italian city states. The close Italian links to the Levant created great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east. Christian leaders, such as Prince Henry the Navigator, also launched expeditions in hopes of finding converts, or the fabled Prester John. There were many different types of causes and effects on the Age of Exploration.
The first of these travelers was Giovanni de Plano Carpini who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241–1247. The most famous traveler, however, was Marco Polo who wrote of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295 in which he described being a guest at the Yuan Dynasty court of Kublai Khan. His journey was written up as Travels and the work was read throughout Europe. In 1439, Niccolò Da Conti published an account of his travels to India and Southeast Asia. In 1466-1472, a Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver described travels to India in his book A Journey Beyond the Three Seas.
These journeys had little immediate effect. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became far more difficult and dangerous. The Black Death of the fourteenth century also blocked travel and trade. The land route to the East was controlled by Mediterranean commercial interests and Islamic empires that both controlled the flow and price of goods. The rise of the aggressive and expansionist Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.