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The European discovery of America opened up a [[New World]] to [[Western Christendom]].  

The '''European discovery of America''' opened up a [[New World]] to [[Western Christendom]].  

Although [[Vikings]] had colonized Greenland and visited Canada, news of these lands was unknown to [[Europe]]ans. The [[Eurasia]]n and [[Africa]]n continents were the only land masses known to Western civilization throughout [[Medieval]] times and into the [[Renaissance]]. Even the true [[circumference]] of the [[Earth]] was not clearly known.  

Although [[Vikings]] had colonized Greenland and visited Canada, news of these lands was unknown to [[Europe]]ans. The [[Eurasia]]n and [[Africa]]n continents were the only land masses known to Western civilization throughout [[Medieval]] times and into the [[Renaissance]]. Even the true [[circumference]] of the [[Earth]] was not clearly known.  

Toynbee wrote:

Toynbee wrote:

:The Spanish conquerors of the Middle American and Andean worlds immediately overwhelmed their ill-equipped and unsuspecting victims by force of arms; they virtually exterminated those elements of the population that were the repositories of the indigenous cultures; they substituted themselves as an alien dominant minority, and they reduced the rural population to the status of an internal proletariat of the Western Christian society ... [http://books.google.com/books?id=aRmTMxO61m4C&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=american+civilizations+toynbee&source=web&ots=TyCdfo3VXE&sig=E01vOp1lxi7EezYIOuZ9U-Jgk9g#PPA180,M1 ]

:The Spanish conquerors of the Middle American and Andean worlds immediately overwhelmed their ill-equipped and unsuspecting victims by force of arms; they virtually exterminated those elements of the population that were the repositories of the indigenous cultures; they substituted themselves as an alien dominant minority, and they reduced the rural population to the status of an internal proletariat of the Western Christian society ...<ref>http://books.google.com/books?id=aRmTMxO61m4C&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&ots=TyCdfo3VXE&sig=E01vOp1lxi7EezYIOuZ9U-Jgk9g#PPA180,M1 </ref>

 

[[Category:history]]

[[Category:history]]