Navegación e historia de la ciencia: 2018, año de aniversarios (Bartolomé Díaz, Vasco de Gama, Cristóbal Colón)

Abstract

In 1488, the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope, culminating the project initiated in 1410 by the Prince Henry the Navigator in order to find the southern tip of Africa and provide an alternative route to the Indies. In short, it was about establishing a sea route between  Europe and Asia that was safer than crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East, whose passage  was forbidden by the Ottomans in the second half of the fifteenth century. In 1498, another Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, could reach Calicut, in India, again skirting the southern tip of Africa. Essentially it was an exploratory expedition, aimed to open the later so-called  Indian “route of spices”. The same year, Christopher Columbus departed from Sanlucar de Barrameda (Cadiz). In this third voyage, he discovered Venezuela and, after going back to Spain, he claimed about the sphericity of the  Earth, which was communicated to the Spanish Catholic Kings.