Then--the invention not of Italy but of Germany--came the art of printing, and made this revival of Greek literature quickly portable into other lands.
Even more momentous was the new knowledge the age brought of the physical world.

The brilliant conjectures of Copernicus paved the way for Galileo, and the warped and narrow cosmology which conceived the earth as the centre of the universe, suffered a blow that in shaking it shook also religion.

And while the conjectures of the men of science were adding regions undreamt of to the physical universe, the discoverers were enlarging the territories of the earth itself.

The Portuguese, with the aid of sailors trained in the great Mediterranean ports of Genoa and Venice, pushed the track of exploration down the western coast of Africa; the Cape was circumnavigated by Vasco da Gama, and India reached for the first time by Western men by way of the sea.
Columbus reached Trinidad and discovered the "New" World; his successors pushed past him and touched the Continent.

Spanish colonies grew up along the coasts of North and Central America and in Peru, and the Portuguese reached Brazil.