Hi there! This is some info i had found when i researched this question, the answer is at the bottom, hope this helps you ! <3
It is the late 1400s. Europe is rising from the ashes of a black night: the Middle Ages, or Medieval Period. People have died, suffering from plague after plague born on ships from far countries and caused by poor hygiene and public sanitation. The muck and grime of city streets haunts the ill, creating tunnels of death and cries of fear at a God who seems to have forsaken them.
It has also been plagued by war: the Crusades, having taken most hardworking men far from their homes, uncertain of return; and fierce provincial battles between Lords for control over land and the peasants who work it. But out of the death and devastation will arise a new era, one which will change the world forever.
In the 1400s, Europe's lust for Arabian soil, its hardships under provincial loyalties and prolonged plagues, and its darkness from the learning of the Ancient world came to a close. While the Crusades had brought about prolonged warfare, especially in a time when disease rampaged those at home, it also brought the key to Europe's salvation: classical learning. Exposure to the Arabian world inadvertantly exposed Crusaders - and the monks, scholars, and officials who accompanied them - to the preserved classical learning of the Ancient Worlds. The works of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and many others once again were returned to European soil and copied by the monks who slaved in monasteries over texts day after day.
But while the reacquisition of classical learning was a key, it was not the only key. Johann Gutenberg provided the next step in Europe's journey when he invented movable type - the precursor of the printing press - in the 1440s. Over the next several years, written knowledge spread further and faster than ever before, as the age of handwritten copies came to an end. Access to knowledge increased as texts were no longer written in the traditional Latin and instead published in vernacular (common) languages. Literacy was no longer limited to the royalty and upper classes. The Crusades had generated the need for portable religion that could be understood by commoners - another reason for the publication of the Bible in English.
The Age of Discovery, or the Age of Exploration (approximately from the beginning of the 15th century until the end of the 18th century), is an informal and loosely defined term for the period in European history in which extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture and which was the beginning of globalization. It also marks the rise of the period of widespread adoption in Europe of colonialism and mercantilism as national policies. Many lands previously unknown to Europeans were discovered by them during this period, though most were already inhabited. From the perspective of many non-Europeans, the Age of Discovery marked the arrival of invaders from previously unknown continents.
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