European exploration was brought on by the three G’s: God, gold, and glory. People wanted to spread Christianity whether it be Catholicism or Protestantism, while explorers such as Cortes were looking for gold to get rich and glory to get famous. This age of exploration was able to occur because of technological advances such as the caravel, cannons on ships, more advanced cartography, and the magnetic compass. The impact exploration had on the natives of the New World was changes in the natives culture, enslavement of the native people, and a massive population decrease. The culture of the natives was seen as barbaric by the European explorers as many native societies in the New World had a polytheistic religion in which they worshipped many different gods, and practiced human sacrifice such as the Aztecs who sacrificed people to their gods for favor. Hernan Cortes expresses this belief in a letter to Charles V, saying “they have a custom….abominable….deserving of punishment….they take [people]....[and] take out their hearts and entrails….as a sacrifice to their gods” (Doc 1). Cortes no doubt had this viewpoint because he was a Christian and part of his time spent with the …show more content…
This sort of thing could potentially happen today with space exploration. People around the world are attempting to explore space in order to find new resources and more space for people to live as populations increase, both of these things were motivations behind European exploration. If the Earth were in dire need of resources and space and we came upon a planet that could support life, people would do everything in their power to take control of that planet, regardless of whether or not anything lived there. The people of Earth would take what they wanted, just as the Europeans did in the New