This map, drawn in 1490 by Henricus Martellus, shows the world as it was known to Europeans just before Columbus’s first journey: a single huge continent surrounded by a single ocean.
“¡Tierra!”: When Two Worlds Met
Young Spaniards living in 1492 knew the world was round, but they thought it was much smaller than it really was. They knew of only three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa, which were believed to be equally distant from Jerusalem, the center of all Creation. They thought all land was surrounded by one ocean, known as the Ocean Sea, and that the sun, moon, stars, and planets revolved around the earth. Some believed that the lands below the equator were so hot that people trying to reach them by land would burn, while sailors would be boiled alive in the scalding seas.
Meanwhile, a third of the world away from Spain, 75 million people were scattered throughout a chain of continents and islands from Alaska to Chile. They were organized in hundreds of tribes and family groups, each with their own ways of communicating, finding shelter, worshiping, playing, and gathering food. One group of islanders now known as Tainos fished the warm waters of the Caribbean. On October 12, 1492, they met a far greater force even than the hurricanes that sometimes battered their islands. The world would never be the same.