Why did Europeans start exploring during the Renaissance?

Answer 1

In the 1400s, there was no refrigeration. To avoid meat to spoil, people preserve their meat with salt and dry it (like beef jerky). They also used a lot of spices like pepper to cover the taste of the salted meat. But in Europe, these spices did not grow anywhere. They can just only find it in Asian countries like China, Japan, and India, and these countries were known together as "The Indies". It was very difficult to get the spices from Asia to Europe, because they had to bring the spices across thousands of miles of dangerous mountains and deserts by spice traders. On their way, there were bandits waiting to rob the spice caravans. After using spice traders, they would bring the spices by ships, but the sea was also dangerous because of pirates and storms. Since it was so difficult to get spices from Asia to Europe, spices were very expensive.

European rulers have fought many wars. They fought against each other and against the Turkish Empire. These wars cost a lot of money, so they needed to find a lot of gold, silver, and precious stones to pay for them. They thought there were gold, silver, and precious stones in Asia, so they decided to find them and bring it back to Europe.

In the late 1400s, The Europeans did not know many things about the earth. Most of them had not been outside of Europe before. Because of this reason, the European map of the world included only Europe, Asia, and the top of Africa. They thought there was only one ocean, the Ocean Sea. Although many people thought the world was flat, educated Europeans knew that it was round. But the problem was they did not know how large the world was.

As a conclusion, the Europeans explored during the renaissance because they want to find spices, find gold, silver, and precious stones and expend their knowledge.