Age of Exploration - English Online探索岁英语在线.pdfVIP

1 Age of Exploration By the end of the 15th century many thing were chang- ing in Europe. The population started to grow more quickly and a new class of merchants emerged. They Words wanted to buy and sell expensive and valuable products from Asia—like gold, jewels and silk. cinnamon =a sweet brown substance In those days, people had no refrigerators to preserve their food. They dried meat and often used salt to make that gives cake and other sweet foods a special taste it last longer. To make food taste better they used spices , like pepper or cinnamon. convinced = to be sure that some- thing is true For centuries Europeans brought these goods on a land route from Asia over thousands of dangerous kilometres . In the 15th century the overland routes emerge = to come up were being controlled by the Turkish Empire, which made it even more diffi- empire = a group of countries that cult for European merchants to pass through. are controlled by a king As a result, some European countries, like Spain and Portugal, decided to find explore = to travel around a place out if there was a sea route to India. With the help of new kinds of ships that and find out something about it could sail faster and instruments , like the quadrant, they started the Age of Exploration. jewels = very valuable stones , like diamonds Portuguese exploration merc