History
In western knowledge and culture, carvel construction originated in the Carrack and Caravel ships of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the two types of ships both being invented in Iberia from which they were first sailed by the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain in the early trans-oceanic voyages of the Age of Exploration. At the same time as their appearance, the centuries-long battles to expel the Muslims from Iberia were gradually swinging to the Christian side, represented by the Kingdom of Aragon and the Kingdom of Castile, which were not united into Spain until the time of Christopher Columbus. Their invention is generally credited to the Portuguese people, who first explored south along the coast of Africa searching for a trade route to the far east in order to avoid the costly middlemen of the Eastern Mediterranean civilizations who sat upon the routes of the spice trade. Spices, in the era, were expensive luxuries and were used medicinally.
Read more about this topic: Carvel (boat Building)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)