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His aim was to open up a faster trading route to the Far East, because he thought that the lower estimates of the Earth's circumference were correct.

At the time, there were wide variances in the estimates of the westward distance between Europe and China, and the latitude of China is the same as the Mediterannean. So without the intervening Americas, it would be a shorter trip than sailing around Africa. Later Spanish explorers eventually realized that they had not reached the East Indies, although the name "indian" had already been applied to Native Americans, who were similarly darker-skinned than Europeans.

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14y ago

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