Pre-1600: Science, Medicine, and Technology: Chronology

IMPORTANT EVENTS TO 1600

IMPORTANT EVENTS TO 1600

1200s

• The magnetic compass is first used by European sailors in the Mediterranean Sea.

1298-1299

• While a prisoner of the Genoese, Venetian traveler Marco Polo writes Divisament dou monde, a lengthy account of his adventures in China and other areas of East Asia. His book fascinates European readers for centuries to come.

1348-1351

• The bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, ravages Europe, killing as much as one-third of the continent’s population.

1410

• Pierre d’Ailly completes his geographical summary titled Imago Mundi (Image of the World).
• Florentine scholar Jacopo Angelo de’ Scarperia completes his Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia.

1420s

• Portugal begins the settlement of the Madeira Islands, and sugar plantations there make extensive use of imported African slave labor.

1430?

• Portuguese sailors discover the Azores Islands.

1439

• Greek scholar Gemistus Plethon introduces to Florentine mapmakers the work of the Roman geographer Strabo.

1440s

• The term caravel is first applied to a class of small but fast Portuguese sailing ships.
• The Portuguese begin settling the previously uninhabited Azores.

1470s

• The Spanish initiate a series of military campaigns to conquer the Canary Islands and establish stable colonies. Within twenty years they enslave much of the native Canarian population.

1474

• Florentine geographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli writes a letter to the Portuguese king in which he explains that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west into the Atlantic Ocean.

1476

• Lorenzo Buonincontri predicts that a “fourth continent” (in addition to Asia, Africa, and Europe) might be found across the ocean to Europe’s west.

1484-1485

• Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus proposes to the Portuguese crown a plan to sail west in order to reach Asia. His plan is rejected as unsound by a royal commission of scholars.

1486

• Columbus submits his plan to the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. As in Portugal a crown-appointed commission rejects his ideas.

1487-1488

• Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Dias sails to the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.

1491

• A second crown-appointed commission in Spain again rejects Columbus’s plan.

1492

• Ferdinand and Isabella ignore their advisors’ recommendations and agree to provide financial backing for Columbus’s proposed expedition.

1492-1493

• During his first voyage Columbus travels through the Caribbean Sea, believing all the while that he has discovered new islands near the coast of Asia.

1493

• The earliest cases of syphilis are reported in Italy and Spain.

1493-1496

• Columbus makes his second voyage to the Caribbean.

1494

• The Treaty of Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal establishes a dividing line in the Atlantic Ocean. Portugal reserves the right to claim all new lands discovered east of the line, with newly discovered lands west of the line going to Spain.

1497

• Florentine sailor Amerigo Vespucci makes his first voyage to the New World. Sailing for Spain, he explores the Caribbean coast of the South American mainland.
• Venetian sailor Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), sailing for England, makes a voyage along the eastern coast of North America.

1497-1499

• Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama sails around the southern tip of Africa and reaches India.

1498

• A second voyage by John Cabot ends in disaster as four of his five ships, including the one carrying Cabot himself, are lost at sea.

1498-1500

• Columbus conducts his third voyage, and for the first time he makes landfall on the South American mainland.

1500

• Portuguese sailors begin to use the constellation known as the Southern Cross as a navigational aid in the southern hemisphere.
• Juan de la Cosa draws a map of the Caribbean regions explored by Spaniards up to that point. The map is kept a state secret by the Spanish government.

1501

• Amerigo Vespucci returns to the New World on a mapping expedition for Portugal.

1502-1504

• Columbus makes his fourth and final voyage to the New World.

1506

• Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain, still maintaining that the lands he had reached were islands near or extensions of the Asian continent.

1507

• The St. Dié map drawn by Martin Waldseemüller and others first applies the name America to the South American continent.

1508

• Amerigo Vespucci is appointed pilot major of Spain.

1508-1509

• Sebastian Cabot, sailing for England, fails to find a northwestern passage to Asia.

1519-1522

• An expedition under Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigates the globe. Magellan does not live to see his achievement, as he is killed by natives in the Philippines.

1523-1524

• Giovanni da Verrazano, sailing for France, explores the eastern coast of North America in search of a northwestern passage to Asia.

1525

• Esteban Gómez, sailing for Spain, explores the eastern coast of North America in search of a northwestern passage to Asia.
• Over the course of the next seven years, Diego Ribeiro draws several detailed maps of the New World.

1534

• Frenchman Jacques Cartier explores the Gulf of St. Lawrence in search of a northwestern passage to Asia.

1535

• Jacques Cartier’s second voyage explores the St. Lawrence River valley.

1538

• Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator completes his earliest world map, applying for the first time the name America to the North American continent.

1543

• Shortly before his death, Nicolaus Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, in which he outlines his model of a sun-centered universe.

1569-1571

• Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes publishes two books dealing with medicines drawn from plants of American origins. His books are translated into English and published in 1577 as one volume entitled Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde.

1595

• Gerardus Mercator’s world atlas is published posthumously.