1490s Exploration & Discovery History Guesser

What exploration & discovery looked like in the 1490s

Small sailing ships with big square and triangular sails cross oceans and arrive at coastlines Europeans had never mapped.

Look for the ship's rigging, the clothes of the crews and the shoreline itself.

1490s moments in the game

• Columbus Lands at Discovery Bay1494
• Slicing the Globe in Half1494
• Vasco da Gama Departs for India1497
• Vasco da Gama Arrives in Calicut1498

Dating a exploration & discovery scene

Ships

Single-masted ships are early medieval; caravels and carracks 1400–1600; big three-masters to the mid-1800s; steam and steel after.

Climbing and polar gear

Wool, leather and sledges pulled by dogs or men are before 1930. Nylon, bright down jackets and oxygen sets come after 1950.

The landscape

This theme gives away the map more than the year: pack ice, Himalayan ridges, rainforest rivers or desert dunes each cut the world down to a few places.

Other decades