John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci Pgs. 138-139

John Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci

• Pgs. 138-139

John Cabot

• 1497 – John Cabot sailed across the Atlantic on a voyage paid for by England.

• He landed in Newfoundland then returned to England and told everyone that he had found the land of the great Kublai Khan.

• The English made John Cabot a hero.

Christopher Columbus

• Columbus never knew that he had not reached Asia.

• Until his death in 1506, Columbus kept on saying that he had found a new water route to Asia.

• Other explorers proved him wrong.

Vespucci Challenges Columbus

• Amerigo Vespucci studied the work Claudius Ptolemy an astronomer in Egypt.

• Vespucci learned the Earth was larger and Asia was smaller than most believed.

• If Asia were as far east as Columbus claimed, it would cover half the Earth.

• He knew this could not be true.

Vespucci Challenges Columbus

• Vespucci disputed the distance Columbus had traveled.

• On his journey, Vespucci figured he had traveled 6,500 miles – more than three times the distance Columbus thought he had sailed.

A New Conclusion

• Amerigo Vespucci concluded that Columbus and Cabot had not sailed to Asia.

• He concluded that the land they had found had to be another continent – the “new world” that some Europeans thought might be there.

America and Amerigo

• Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) was the first person to realize that the Americas were separate from the continent of Asia.

• America was named for him in 1507, when a German mapmaker printed the first map that used the name America for the New World.