Step-by-step explanation:
Between 1492 and 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus led four Spanish-based transatlantic maritime expeditions to the Americas, a continental landmass which was virtually unknown to and outside of the Old World (Afro-Eurasia). These voyages to America led to the widespread knowledge of its existence. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are sometimes cited as the beginning of the modern era.