Age of Exploration · event 4 of 7

1492

Columbus reaches the Caribbean. Sailing west for Asia, Columbus makes landfall in the Bahamas. What follows is the Columbian exchange of crops, animals and diseases, and the conquest and depopulation of the Americas — the single largest demographic catastrophe in recorded history.

The Age of Exploration era

  1. 1271
  2. 1325
  3. 1405
  4. 1492
  5. 1497
  6. 1519
  7. 1768

See the full timeline or read the short history of travel.