Explorers

                Explorers-

Pedro Siqueira, Pedro P. Juan and Victoria

    This text, as you see on the title, talks about some of the famous explorers of the age of exploration (that reached north America). Most of the explores started navigating because they wanted to be famous or because they wanted to find new goods for the country they worked for. The trips were very difficult because people could get sick and die, one of the most famous sickness was called scurvy that was caused by lack of vitamin C.

    Now we will talk about three explorers we research:

    Henry Hudson: people think he was born in the late 16^th century in England. He spent his whole life searching for a new route to Asia but he finally ended finding a route for the north Americas. There's so little information about his life before his first voyage. But it is known that he learned to navigate from fisherman and sailors. (He worked for England) On his first voyage he sailed from England to Svalbard. On his second trip he went from Europe till the Russian Artic national Park. After that he travelled a lot but on Hudson's last voyage in 1611 he was left to drift and then die.

    John Cabot: was born in genoa, Italy and sailed around 1450. He made a voyage in 1497 on the ship Mathew and claimed land on Canada ( mistaking by Asia) for King Henry VII of England. When he was little he moved to England. In May 1496, John Cabot departed from Bristle with 5 ships and a crew of 300 men. In route 1 ship sailed to Ireland and the other four continued on. In 1497 Cabot went to Asia believing the route would be shorter, he traveled with 18 men.

    Magellan: was born in Portugal. In 1480 his objective was to go on a west voyage to reach the spice islands because prince Charles I asked him to do so. He made it. When he was sailing by a sea he thought the sea was slowly and peaceful. So he named that sea the “Peaceful Sea” that nowadays is called the Pacific Ocean. When he was coming back from the spice islands he fought with the Philippines and he was killed with a poison arrow in his heart. After his crew went back to Spain without his body, because the Philippines stayed with his body they liked as a trophy. His crew proved that the world was round, they circumnavigate the planet Earth.

    

The Explorers group

The Explorers group

Pedro Smith, Nicolas, Gabriela B.

     The age of exploration was a time that people traveled unknown seas by boat in search of gold, spices, and territory. Now we are going to talk about some of the most famous explorers. Pedro Álvares Cabral, Marco Polo, and Vasco Da Gama.

     Pedro Álvares Cabral:

    He was born in 1467 in the town of Belmonte Portugal. He discovered Brazil in the 22nd of April when he got to Bahia. After 10 days of staying in Bahia they left to go to India. He died in 1520 in Brazil. He brought back from Brazil to Portugal, Pau Brazil.

    Marco Polo:

   Marco Polo was born in the city state of Venice in the year 1254. There he stayed until he hit 15 then his father Niccolo and his uncle Maffeo returned from a trading trip through the Silk Road. When he was 17 he left with his father and uncle for a 24,000 km trip. They walked in groups called Caravans which were groups of people that rode camels together so they could defend the robbers way more easily. Soon Marco worked for the Khan for 17 years. The Khan liked Marco so that is why he hired him to work as a spy for the Mongolian empire. After a while they left with their pockets full of jewels and riches. They reached Venice in 1296 and Marco died in 1324.

   Vasco da Gama :

  He was born at 1460 in Sines, Portugal. He was the first Portuguese to reach India by boat in 1497. When he reach India the people from there didn't want to trade spices with the Portuguese. But still Vasco da Gama managed to get spices and he brought them back to Portugal getting a fortune of about 6,000%. Vasco da Gama died in 1524 in Cochin India.

  

   And that was the explorers from our group. Hope you enjoyed.

Constellation and Astrolabe

       Names:Amanda,Julia Alves and Clarissa.

  In ancient times, people were religious.As you probably know, countries believed in gods, so they thought the gods used constellations to tell stories.

    People started to create constellations in their minds thinking of the gods, like:Orion, Aquarius and etc. This was before Christ (BC).

They used constellations in agriculture,to know the time to harvest crops, but they were also used on navigation. Once they found Ursa Major they could find the latitude. Ursa Major was one of the most important constellations at the time. It also called big bear. Close to Ursa Major there is Ursa Minor, that is a little bear. The biggest star in the Ursa Menior is the North Star. This allowed ships to travel around the world, and discover new continents like America.

    The astrolabe was an instrument that measured the distance of the stars based on the horizon. It was invented by the ancient greek mathematican called Hipparchus, and originally it was used to tell the time based on the sun, moon or stars. This is one of the oldest measuring devices, used from about 120B.C to 1600 A.C. The name of the astrolabe comes from the greek “to take a star”, because it used the stars to work.

    

Constellations

Made by: Julia Aj, Marcos, Carolina and Gabriela C.

Constellations

       

       Constellations are groups of stars that forms a pattern. At the Age of Exploration, explorers used constellations to guide themselves to new places. Some of the instruments used by them were a the astrolabe, quadrant, and sextant to measure the constellations, so they would know where to go. When there weren’t stars in the sky, they used the compass to know where to go.

    The biggest constellation is the Virgo constellation.

      The constellation that we chose is the Ursa Major, that means “the great bear”. It’s a constellation in the northern hemisphere sky.  It’s the largest northern constellation and third largest constellation in the sky. The Big Dipper constellation is part of the Ursa Major, the brightest stars of the constellation. If you are at the southern hemisphere, you can just see part of the Ursa Major constellation in winter. The North Star is located in the tail of Ursa Minor, but some people think that it is located in the tail of Ursa Major, but it’s not.

Carrack

Carrack Group- Ana Carolina, Rafaela, Maria Izabel and Lara

        In the Age of Exploration, they used boats to travel by the sea, so the time passed and the technology advanced a lot.

The boats were one of the most important thing.

  The carrack was the boat used by the explorers in the Age of Exploration it was a great advanced in the technology during time. In was built with three masts with triangular sails. The largest carrack could reach almost 45m (150 feet) and more than 1000 tons.

In the Age of Exploration with the carrack exist the caravel. Their differences are that the caravel is smaller and safer because it is easy to navigate, and the carrack it is bigger and dangerous because is hard to navigate. The caravel has triangular sails and the carrack square sails.

   The technology in these times was very good for them; they had things such as the astrolabe that is a tool to measured angles and latitude, and the KA-MAIL that was a tool that help people to discover the latitude. They also have the quadrants that was used to discover the height of the Polaris.

   Traveling through the sea was not as easy job, in the past they faced, many dangerous, horrible diseases, huge storms, back of food and water and also the monsters of the sea. Are just sea animals like whales and shark.

    The hygiene in the carrack was very bad, because of the bad hygiene, there were no bathrooms or fresh food and they did not have vitamins. Some of them even eat rats and these ones have more chances to survive the diseases because of the vitamins, rats have.   

The Caravel –

Vitor, Rodrigo and Gustavo

A caravel is a  small boat  used in 15 century. The caravel were fast nad easy to manover , but it cold not support many supplies. The bottom  was protruded bellow the surface of the water by a small distance making it easy to manower.

 The caravel hat "lateen " sails ( triangles shaped ) that allowed a zigzagging tecnic. Plus the square sails ( more powerful when sailing against the wind)and other small changes, they became more used by explorers.

 A carevel was small  so there was not many rooms for people's. So there  were 20 to 40 people tops.

    There were technological advances in a caravel: compass , that had a little magnetic that  always pointed to north, the astrolabe that  said the diferente between the stars nad the horizon. There were also changes in the boat: the faster speed was 100 miles a day crew worked around clock , there pay was poor, disobedience caused punishments,10 years old was the saile .

 There carracks were difficult to navigate but had larger square  sails, while the caravel was fast, smaller and could have triangular sails.

Technology in the Age of Exploration