Remember Christopher Columbus? Columbus was an Italian explorer, a person who goes to find out about a place. He sailed from Spain to North America in 1492. Soon, other explorers followed Columbus.
It wasn’t safe or easy to cross the ocean back then. Why did early European explorers take such risks? European countries paid for most explorers’ journeys. These countries and their explorers had certain goals.
The early explorers changed the world forever. After them, crops, animals, people, diseases, and ideas passed back and forth between the Americas and Europe. The effects were both good and bad. New crops, for example, sometimes damaged existing plants. But they also became a new source of food. For the American Indians, life became very difficult.
