Age and Unit of Exploration

The age of exploration means the unit of exploration. Next in our humanities classes was this unit surrounding The New World: Age of Exploration. This title refers to the time period in Renaissance Europe where many new voyages were taking place. Explorers were boarding great ships and setting sail for places they thought were uninhabited. The main aspect of this unit was to learn about different ways to explore, nations and the effects of these trips. While completing assignments, my class also worked on a short comic that starred our alter-ego explorers, following one of thier trips to the New World. We would then showcase what we learned about voyages in this time period in a presentation to the “Queen” pitching our reason for her to fund us. 

Stretching back into history the first lessons began with Beringia, and how the strait was one of the very first examples of people and animals moving to new areas and spreading their culture to that areas. I also began the first step in making my comic, which was to research my explorer Samuel de Champlain. A long time after the land bridge was first introduced, the Norse, Portuguese and Chinese began exploring and that was the topic of a lesson. After that I learned about the reasons people in Renaissance Europe wanted to explore, whether it was for spices or spreading Christianity. 

The next section surrounded challenges explorers faced on their way and while living in foreign areas to them. I read and completed assignments on life in the 16th century, the means to explore, navigational technology, and European expansionism.

 

Learning about how people wanted to know what was beyond them, and how that motivated them allowed me to put these ideas in context of today’s world, where people are still exploring further and further away. Adventurers boarded large vessels like caravels which were equipped things like astrolabes. These inventions allowed for more travel, and expansionism. Expansionism itself means to expand to new areas, and Europeans did this through much motivation and establishing of trade routes. 

After finally reaching the lands the French, Portuguese, Spanish and more began to establish settlements. We know now the ways in which they did this was not ethical, but what were the other long term effects of these colonies? When Cartier first arrived at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, he met the Iroquois and their chief Donnacona. It was in this exchange that Canada was named, but more importantly this started the long history of trade amongst different nations. Along with the swapping of resources, the slave trade also grew massively. After reading through many primary sources of people who experienced the slave trade, I worked with a group to complete a chart on the sources. 

 

While working through all these assignments, each group in the class read a certain set of comics to prepare us for making our own. The categories included Tintin, Superhero, Anti-hero, and New Age comics.

Every week, our groups read a different one and then on Friday we had a group a discussion about them. My group consisted of Lucy, Kyle, Niklas, and Jackson. We also all filled out a comparison chart with categories, like the layout, characters and themes. My favourite set was probably Tintin, but I’ve always loved Tintin anyway. Seeing these comics did help with seeing how things were drawn and put on the page. The unfortunate side is that our class doesn’t include a professional artist, and these comics were made over hours of talented work. 

As time moved on, and I reached the point where my comic was nearly done, I began to work on my presentation. The key part to work in was persuasion, because the whole premise is that I, Grace, wasn’t actually Grace and instead a Renaissance explorer from France. I also had to include why this character wanted to explore, the challenges faced while on his last voyage, and the significance.

Figuring out how to include all these different things was the hard part, and then when it came to the presentation day I was also a little bit nervous. Watching everyone else’s was interesting because we all had different explorers, and in the after it all I had leaned much more about exploration in Renaissance Europe.