This is the first lecture from the Modern Scholar course Journeys of the Great Explorers: Columbus To Cook taught by Professor Glyndwr Williams.
In this first lecture in a series dedicated to Europe's Discovery of the American Continent, eminent History Professor Glyndwr Williams offers a survey of how Europeans imagined the rest of the world Pre-Columbus. In the late Medieval period, there were many competing ideas on what lay west of Europe, from boiling seas, to dangerous islands to the very edge of a flat earth. Earlier, historically proven expeditions made by Norse explorers in the 10th century gave Europeans their first, furtive foothold in the new world, but it wasn't until 1492 that a mixture technological advances and political initiative made it possible for Christopher Columbus to set sail and change the course of history.