Answer: In 1492, a Spanish-based transatlantic maritime expedition led by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus encountered the Americas, continents which were virtually unknown to and outside of the Old World political and economic system. The four voyages of Columbus led to the widespread knowledge that a continent existed west of Europe and east of Asia. This breakthrough in geographical knowledge inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, colonization, biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, and are sometimes cited as the beginning of the modern era
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