Explorers and Explorations (Part Two) Quiz

Question: Who is regarded as the initiator of the so-called Age of Discovery during the 15th century?

Answer: Henry the Navigator was a Portuguese prince born in 1394. His fame rests primarily on his patronage of navigators, for which he is regarded as the initiator of the European Age of Discovery.

Question: Which navigator is said to have helped lay the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada?

Answer: John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer who, by his voyages in 1497 and 1498, helped lay the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada.

Question: Which English admiral circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580?

Answer: Sir Francis Drake was the most renowned seaman of the Elizabethan Age. He set sail from England in December 1577 with five small ships, manned by fewer than 200 men, and reached the Brazilian coast in the spring of 1578. Drake returned in September 1580, becoming the first captain ever to sail his own ship around the world—the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan having been killed before completing his circumnavigation—and the first Englishman to sail the Pacific, Indian, and South Atlantic oceans.

Question: Which Inca ruler was captured and executed by the explorer Francisco Pizarro, thus ending the Inca empire?

Answer: Atahuallpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Inca, was victorious in a devastating civil war with his half brother only to be captured, held for ransom, and then executed by the Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro in 1533. His execution marked the end of the Inca empire.

Question: Who was the discoverer of Homeric Troy and one of the great popularizers of archaeology?

Answer: The archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was a modern-day explorer of history: he discovered Homeric Troy, as well as the remains of a prehistoric Bronze Age civilization, in Turkey. He made similar discoveries at Mycenae. By doing so, Schliemann discovered two new civilizations and enormously lengthened the perspective of history through his writing aimed at everyday audiences.

Question: Who was among the first European navigators to recognize that a “New World” had been discovered in the 15th century?

Answer: Amerigo Vespucci was a merchant and explorer-navigator who took part in early voyages to the New World (1499–1500, 1501–02). The voyage of 1501–02 is of fundamental importance in the history of geographic discovery in that Vespucci himself, and scholars as well, became convinced that the newly discovered lands were not part of Asia but a “New World.”