Nearly 40 years after finding the remains of the 16th-century town of Santa Elena on present-day Parris Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, archaeologists have discovered San Marcos, one of...
The legend of Irish Milesians is one of the strangest stories connected with the origins of these islanders. Where did they come from? Is it possible that the early ancestors of modern Irish people...
Gonzalo Guerrero (known also as Gonzalo Marinero, Gonzalo de Aroca, and Gonzalo de Aroza) was a Spanish soldier who hoped to become a conquistador in the New World. Instead, he was captured by the...
The Calusa (said to mean fierce people ) are a Native American tribe that once inhabited the southwestern coast of Florida. The Calusa are said to have been a socially complex and politically...
Hellburners were a type of fire ship best-known to have been used in Europe during the 16th century AD. Whilst hellburners were first used during the early modern period, fire ships were already in...
King Philip II of Spain was always hungry for new adventures and conquering new lands. His greatest competition were the English, who also dreamed of world domination. Thus, the King of Spain went...
Near the Atlantic Ocean, on a small peninsula there is a castle known as Monterreal Castle, Gondomar Castle, or Ox Hill Fortress. Although it has been destroyed many times over the years, it remains...
Cuauhtémoc (meaning ‘Setting Sun’ or ‘Descending Eagle’) was the 11th Tlatoani (literally meaning ‘speaker’, but may also be translated as ‘king’) of Tenochtitlan, and the last ruler of the Aztec...
Official history says that the Spanish colonizers in America were focused on the territory from Mexico to the end of South America. For centuries, there was the question of why the Spaniards didn't...
The history of Spain is full of great stories about the brave sailors and won sea battles. One of the important players in these tales comes in the form of Casto Mendez Nunez. Casto Mendez Nunez was...
Hernán Cortés was a Spanish conquistador who was instrumental in the fall of the Aztec Empire. After death, his body was buried in Seville, but later it was re-buried many times, in some cases to...
An archaeologist and historian working on his own found the first multi-year settlement by Europeans on U.S. soil, in Pensacola, Florida. The mid-16th century expedition of about 1,500 people led by...
The remnants of a 400-year-old Spanish colonial church have emerged from the depths of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas, Mexico, after a drought caused the water level to drop by 82 feet (25...
On the border with France, embraced by a vast green pasture on which the cows calmly graze, lies the village of Zugarramurdi. Located in the Navarre region of Xareta this tiny village currently has...
August 10, 2015, marked the 335 th anniversary of the Pueblo Indian uprising, during which they expelled the Spanish usurpers and tormentors from New Mexico. Modern Pueblo Indians call August 10...
Treasure hunters exploring the waters off the coast of Florida, USA, have discovered a hoard of long forgotten treasure that has been lying on the seabed for at least 300 years. At a depth of about...
When Europeans arrived in the New World, they did not only kill people with war, slavery and disease, they also attempted to destroy the cultures of the native peoples. Among so many cultural...
It is not every day that a team of divers and investigators stumbles upon the wreck of a 17 th century Spanish merchant ship. The Encarnación ( ‘ Incarnation’) was part of a fleet of Merchant Ships...
It was gold and silver that drove the Spanish on in their exploration and conquest of the Americas. By the 1530s, less than 50 years after Christopher Columbus had reached the New World, the Spanish...
The Inca ruler, Atahualpa, is one of the key figures in the history of the European colonialization of South America. As the last emperor of the largest empire in pre-Columbian Empire, Atahualpa was...
In the early 16 th century, Spain was becoming a global superpower due to innovations in navigation and seafaring. At the end of the previous century, Christopher Columbus, whose voyage had been...
Empires may rise and fall, but the impact they have on their conquered subjects and the future may continue beyond their passing, for better or for worse. The Spanish Empire, which began in the 15 th...
Scientists studying ice core samples from Peru have discovered a variety of trace elements, indicating that Spanish colonial mining caused toxic air pollution over South America approximately 240...
After a decade of research on a 16 th century shipwreck recovered from the Thames River in England, researchers have finally been able to identify it as the Cherabin, England’s only surviving state...
