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Course: Big History Project > Unit 8
Lesson 2: Exploration & Interconnection | 8.1- ACTIVITY: World Travelers
- WATCH: Why Early Globalization Matters
- READ: China — The First Great Divergence
- READ: An Age of Adventure
- ACTIVITY: An Age of Adventure
- READ: Ibn Battuta
- READ: Marco Polo
- READ: Zheng He
- ACTIVITY: Explorers Mini Project
- WATCH: Brain Boost - H2
- READ: The Lion of the Sea — Ahmad Ibn Mājid
- READ: Gallery — Ships
- Quiz: Exploration & Interconnection
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ACTIVITY: Explorers Mini Project
Purpose
This activity brings the entire lesson together as you’re going to research an explorer who was responsible for connecting two world zones. You must also answer a series of questions in order to learn about their motivation, purpose, accomplishments, and contribution to collective learning. A key piece of this activity is to research how we know about the explorer’s journey, which will allow you to examine the evidence they left behind.
Process
Choose one explorer from the Mariners' Museum webpage. Your chosen explorer must have somehow connected two world zones.
As you research, take notes to answer the following questions:
1. What world zones did the explorer connect?
2. What was the motivation for their exploration? Was it for political, economic, religious, scientific, or technological reasons?
3. What did they discover? Land, people, goods, ideas, or a combination of these?
4. How did they contribute to collective learning? Focus on things such as ideas, goods, technology, religion, and politics.
For Further Discussion
Share the answer to two of the questions above about your explorer (make sure to note which explorer you picked!). Then, expand upon the response that someone else left about a different explorer by answering one of the questions that they didn’t answer themselves.
Want to join the conversation?
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo-
1)He connected the Americas and Afro-Eurasia.
2)He wanted to find the Northwest Passage and ended up claiming land for Spain.(5 votes)
He was best known for exploring the west coast of north america on behalf of spain he was the first european explorer to navigate the coast of present day california.(3 votes)
- My explorer of choice was queen hatshepsut. She was pharoah of egypt from 1507 to 1458 BC. She was regarded as one of the greatest pharoahs of her time and hands down the greatest woman pharoah. She was responsible for establish j ng the trade r ok utes that were disrupted during the hyksos occupation of egypt and there for she brought great wealth to her dynasty. She also was responsible for the first recorded attempt to transport trees she imported frakincense and myrrh, namely 31 myrrh trees with the roots still in tact from punt. She was m a inly km now for her peaceful exploration.(3 votes)
- EXPLORERS MINI PROJECT
Pedro Alvarez Cabral – Portugal
1. What world zones did the explorer connect? Brazil and India
2. What was the motivation for their exploration? Was it for political, economic, religious, scientific, or technological reasons?
To establish trading post in India and solidify the trade relations first established by Vasco da Gama
3. What did they discover? Land, people, goods, ideas, or a combination of these?
He established trading posts, for Portugal, in India; Although 3 other explorers also had discovered South America, they claimed land leading up to Brazil, but not Brazil;
4. How did they contribute to collective learning? Focus on things such as ideas, goods, technology, religion, and politics.
He began a trade treaty with India; discovered that Calicut was a hostile environment; and brought back pearls, diamonds, porcelain, pepper, ginger, cinnamon and cloves.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo - Spain
1. What world zones did the explorer connect? He connected North America by way of California; and travelled from Mexico to the East Indies.
2. What was the motivation for their exploration? Was it for political, economic, religious, scientific, or technological reasons?
He wanted to explore the Pacific coastline and race against the French and English in finding the “northwest passage”.
3. What did they discover? Land, people, goods, ideas, or a combination of these?
He discovered California was not an island, as previously thought and claimed it for Spain; he discovered friendly native americans in San Diego and Los Angeles areas; he assisted Spain in the conquering of Cuba, Guatemala and Mexico.
4. How did they contribute to collective learning? Focus on things such as ideas, goods, technology, religion, and politics.
His mapping of the pacific coastline, helped Spains future explorations in North America.(2 votes) - Ronald Amundsen
His motivation for exploration was to find the magnetic and geographic north and south pole
the world zones was the artic zone.(1 vote) - Afro-Eurasian to the Pacific, and Australia(1 vote)
I picked...Queen Hatshepsut. Turned out they had little info on her available in the link, but here's what I managed to scrape up.
1) Queen Hatshepsut apparently worked as an intermediary between Egypt and the Somalian Peninsula, on the North East Coast of Africa.
2) I'll say economic. She apparently transported luxurious and rare goods, such as tusks, ebony, and gold.
3) (This one required a bit of googling...) From Wikipedia, she didn't provide a lot of discoveries or artifacts of interest, other than an accurate statue of the Queen of Punt. She did introduce some interesting plants to the Somalian Peninsula.
4) She contributed goods, and her contracting skills, seeing as she managed the construction of several monuments, and temples. Most of them are located in Egypt, but they're still pretty significant.(1 vote)
I chose Christopher Columbus.
2. What was the motivation for their exploration? Was it for political, economic, religious, scientific, or technological reasons?
His motivation was to find goods to take back to Spain, to spread Christianity, and to explore new places no one else had.
3. What did they discover? Land, people, goods, ideas, or a combination of these?
He discovered the land of the Americas, he found goods such as the food they ate, and he got ideas of learning to live of the land and how to do thing with what resources you have(1 vote)
why do they want to explore?(1 vote)- Bartolomeu Diaz is my explorer and he was from Portagal
1.What world zones did the explorer connect?
I would say explorer Diaz connected Africa and India as well as discovered Brazil.
2.What was the motivation for their exploration?
Diaz set out to find the country of christian king Prester John as well as sail the southern end of Africa in hopes of finding a route to Asia.(0 votes) - Link is not working.(0 votes)