ABSTRACT
Western Civilization today is essentially a world-straddling phenomenon, and this is largely a result of the spirit of discovery and conquest that seized Europe in the century and a half after Columbus's first transatlantic journey in 1492. Until the end of the 1400s, Portugal and Spain had been focused almost entirely on battling the Moors, Muslims who ruled the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula. When the last Moorish kingdom finally collapsed in 1492, the Portuguese and Spanish were suddenly able to concentrate on new ventures. Although initially Europeans were apt to focus on the large-scale extraction of gold and silver from the Americas, and the introduction of Christianity to the natives in return, in reality the interaction between European and Native American cultures, environments, and economies was much more complex. Among the strongest and most complex of the American civilizations were the Aztecs in modern Mexico and the Incas in Peru.
