The explorations, discoveries, scientific inventions and scholarly works of Arabs provided a new and more realistic picture of the Arab world and other nations. Marco Polo's adventures in Central Asia and China added new information in the geographical literature. It was followed by Renaissance in Europe. Moreover, there were definite improvements in the art of navigation including wide adoption of magnetic compass. With these devices, the navigators became more confident. Thus the stage was set for the next step in the discovery of the unknown parts of the world. This was the period of Muslim's decadence. The Arab Empire started disintegrating.
The impetus given by Henry, many of the navigators offered themselves to explore the western coast of Africa, the Cape Bojador and the Gulf of Guinea. In 1492 Christopher Columbus reached the New World (America), and Vasco de Gama through the Cape of Good Hope entered into the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, and sailed with the Arabs to reach India in 1498. In 1520 Fernao de Magellan was the first to reach Asia by sailing west. From 1768 to 1778 Captain Cook sailed extensively in the Indian and Pacific Oceans to locate the Terra Incognita (unknown land) of Ptolemy. In his venture he discovered many new islands and the continent of Australia. Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Cook and almost all the expeditionary leaders relied on Ptolemy's calculations about the latitudes and circumference of the earth, but some of their more famous discoveries disproved Ptolemy's calculations and changed the picture of the world he had established. There were new developments in cartography - new projections, especially that of Mercator 1569 were invented; the first globe of the world was made and more new and accurate maps of the world and countries were prepared.
Up to the 15th century most of the scholars took earth as the centre of Universe and tried to study the Universe with a geocentric approach. But after the Great Age of Discovery, the heliocentric idea was strengthened. The Polish scholar, Nicholas Copernicus, who between 1497 and 1529, carried out numerous observations of the planets, moon and stars, established that all the planets rotate around the sun. This is known as the heliocentric concept of the Universe. In 1618, J. Kepler proved that planetary motions were elliptical rather than circular. In 1623 Galileo presented the proof that Copernicus was right about the heliocentric Universe. In 1686 Isaac Newton presented his laws of gravitation. These developments led to scientific revolution and the period of specialization started, which gave birth to the taxonomy of branching of physical, biological and social sciences. The printing machine was invented, consequently many books were published in Europe about the explorations, voyages, discoveries and geography of the newly discovered lands. But in all the writings of this period earth was taken as the home of man in which the mode of life of the people is closely influenced by the physical environment.
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page", St. Augustine said. Here at www.travel-university.org we believe that every page must be read and explored. Travel is an avenue of learning that no text or classroom can teach. The world is a living classroom and you the student. We invite you to the www.travel-university.org library where you can read general interest and detail oriented articles.
