European World View in the 15th Century,

European World View

In the 15th Century, the knowledge that the Europeans had of the world was so limited since most of them had never been outside Europe and their view of the outside world was in relation to Europe itself. Indeed, the European map of the world had only Europe, Asia and the top part of Africa as the only continents that existed in the world. The map also depicted only one ocean, "the Ocean Sea" to be existent in the world (Schmiechen James, 1999). There was a wide belief that the world was flat, though a few Europeans had the knowledge that it was not flat but the challenge was to know how big it was.

The lack of knowledge about the outside world gave room for rumors to fill in the gaps. From the European art, it is apparent that there was a gross misconception of what lay outside the European world. The illustrations about the land to the East of Europe depicted bizarre looking people with feet like umbrellas, their faces on their stomach and had dog's heads. There were other bizarre pieces of literature that did the round for instance the legendary Christian king called Prester John who had an army of a million men and also had a mirror that could show him whatever happened in whichever place in his kingdom. This literature appeared to be part of a plan to rebuff the Muslim influence that was fast expanding by then.

There was a very vague idea of the planet outside their own continent. They had no idea especially about the size of the continent and borrowing from the Biblical passages, they interpreted these passages to the effect that Europe constituted seven-eighths of the entire world land mass. They also interpreted these passages to the effect that it was impossible t voyage around Africa to India due to existence of the great southern continent that connected to Africa and that the Indian Ocean was an inland ocean (Chris Butler, 2007).

It is also noticeable that the Europeans had not idea about the resistance of the Americas, Antarctica and Australia. They grossly underestimated the size of the earth to the tune of 10,000 miles making it virtually impossible for these European explorers impossible to know the teru nature of the expanse of the world unless they went out to find out. This lack of knowledge encouraged explorers like Christopher Columbus and Magellan to set out sails in a bid to find out the true nature of the world for themselves. They decided to venture first to the Far East since, acceding to the erroneous estimations of that time, it sounded closer, an idea that they later discovered was totally misleading.