why did discoveries and exploration of new lands come only during the renaissance and not earlier?

Question

additional question: Why did the initiative come from western europe and not the middle east , china or india.

Answer 1

China explored the Indian Ocean as far as east Africa in the early 1400's. Cultural changes caused China to abandon such efforts mid-century.



Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 cut Europe off from trade with the East. This motivated governments and individuals to find new ways of making trade connections.



Spain was motivated by Portuguese successes in establishing trading posts along the west African coast, and Papal decrees forbidding Spain from sharing in the profits, to find other routes to Asia, if available.



Improvements in navigational equipment, especially the introduction of the astrolabe, made the possibility of sailing into totally unknown waters less crazy-sounding than before.



BTW, educated Europeans had known for centuries before Columbus that the world is round. Columbus claimed it was smaller than generally thought, making it possible to reach Asia sailing west before supplies ran out. He was wrong.

Answer 2

Before these periods, writing was not widespread. There was lots of exploration going on, it just wasn't being financed by rich kingdoms that had the wealth to send a reporter along on the expedition.



Maybe a clan of folks get together and go for a long boat ride. There are no maps to guide them, but they find some pretty neat places. When they get back they tell the rest of the village, hey, found some neat stuff, but that's as far as it goes. Maybe next year the entire village dies of some disease the explorers brought back with them and so there's no record of their discoveries.



At the time of the Renaissance, writing and historians were more common. Important events / discoveries were recorded for future generations. After the printing press became widespread, books became more common and people learned about stuff that happened in the past from all over the world and not just their little village. That changed our impression of the world and suddenly history seems to have started at that point in time, but only because it was written down for others to read.

Answer 3

The question is about technological advances that made exploration possible. Of these (gunpowder is not one), it it perhaps the magnetic compass that is the most significant, for it made possible the determination of direction even on a cloudy night at sea. This is significant if you are at sea at the time, and the sheer length of sea voyages in those days meant that you would be, often for days or weeks on end. The second is probably the invention of the astrolabe, for it made possible the determination of lattitude, and rudimentary celestial navigation. Great things tend to come in threes, and my nomination the third invention was the telescope. This made possible the use of Jupiter's moons as giant clock hands, which then could be used for the determination of longitude.

Answer 4

The premise of your question is not good. there were many voyages prior to the Renaissance. Hannibal the Navigator made his voyage around Africa in 500BC. The Vikings came to the Americas in about 1000 BC. Saint Brendan of Clonfert, also called the Navigator sailed in the 500s AD and wrote a book about it. God only knows where the Phoenicians travelled to.



There is another voyage recorded that began in the 1170s leaving from Wales and "supposedly" reaching the US, Madoc ab Owain Gwyndd made the trip with a crew and passengers. He supposedly arrived in the Panhandle area of Florida about 1173 and the people who came with him travelled inland and a group of "indians," the Mandans, were found during the Lewis and Clark era and their language had a lot of Welsh cognates. That is that they did not necessarily speak any pure Indian language. There are people in the S. Appalachian Mountains called the MELUNGEONS that no one knows where they came from or how they got there. They are not Indian, they are not Black, they are not a mixture of Indian, black or indian white, but they were there when the Cherokees got into the mountains.



In another little book I received from the author many years ago, CALALUS, he records the discovery of artifacts that date to the 70AD era, or early Christian times, of a Jewish/Roman group that got as far as New MExico and Arizona.



Barry Fell, in AMERICA BC, records many sites that indicate a really old, far older than the Renaissance, contacts with N. America.



There were Christian monks in Iceland when the vikings got there.



It would be difficult to figure out whether all of these trips were planned or if those who were in boats just got blown off course. The problem of entering the atlantic from the Mediterranean is that once you get a bit out into the sea, you get picked up by prevailing winds and currents, the same winds and currents that Columbus used in his initial voyages.



So, as I said, your premise is wrong. Check me out.

Answer 5

1)There was too much superstition and fear of devils,demons etc .Every thing was viewed from such an angle from king to the man on the street in the days before Renaissance.

2)The Renaissance brought a spirit of scientific inquiry and daring among the highly educated elite

from universities,educated princely and aristocratic families who started to think exactly like a modern day university graduate .. There was reckless daring and thirst to explore the Unknown in the wide physical world.All intellectuals and the scientifically educated among aristocrats and princes were fully convinced that the heavy stone sphere of Earth could hang and float in space and revolve round Sun at terrific speed and even so the oceans of water can stick to the spherical Earth by the terrible forces of gravity like a thin polythene sheet wrapped round it(the Earth) and that even a mountain lying any where on Earth if thrown up should fall towards center of earth

3)there was already lot of astronomical data recorded since centuries but which could not be explained with the blind theory that earth is at center of universe .However all this data can be explained only if we agree that Earth is revolving round the Sun. Copernicus declared with all his proofs that Earth revolves round the Sun and that planets also revolve round Sun.

4)explorers could now confidently declare that if they travel in a strong boat with sufficient food and water for an year they can come back to starting point on Earth just like an ant crawling on a foot ball comes back to starting point.Adventurous seamen like Columbus became very eager to circle Earth

5)it can be seen that the burning and fearless spirit of inquiry of sailors,financiers from princely families ready to finance even such dangerous adventures and firm belief of all in the scientific theory about roundness of Earth explain the fact mentioned in the question.

Answer 6

'earlier' was the dark ages, when people thought if you sailed too far you would fall off the edge of the flat earth



it was the Renaissance that brought with it the urge to explore the world, and bedamned to the flat-earthers of the world

Answer 7

because they did not pay for is them self