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.