Late Middle Ages · Africa · Exploration

1434

Gomes Eanes Reaches Senegal

1434

Portuguese caravels continued their systematic charting of the West African coast. The push past Bojador released a decade of rapid southward progress. Trade goods, slaves, and geographical knowledge flowed north to Lisbon; gold from the African interior began reshaping Portuguese royal finance. The encounter with sub-Saharan Africa's green coastline shattered the medieval assumption that the tropics were uninhabitable wastelands of boiling sea.

In context
Also in 1434 (4 other events on record)
Era

Late Middle Ages (1301–1500), one of 874 events from that era on Saeculum.