Page 185 - (DK) Danger! Open with Extreme Caution!

Age of exploration

1500–1750
Europeans spread guns and disease around
the world as they built up trading empires and colonies. 20th century
Enslaving “uncivilized” native peoples, they then began Although life expectancy in
a deadly trade in human lives, deporting African slaves the western world exceeded
to the New World. Within the European homelands, too, 75 years by the year 2000,
thousands more were killed in the wars of religion that in the poorest countries it was
swept across the continent as Catholics and only about 40 years. More
Protestants battled it out for supremacy. people died in war than in any
other century, with 20 million
deaths in World War I and
55 million in World War II
alone. Millions more died
in terrible famines and
disease epidemics, such
as the flu and AIDS.

Industrial Age
1750–1900

Better medical knowledge
and improved sanitation
Middle Ages meant that people could
expect to live longer and
400–1500 CE longer… but only if they were
With barbarian invaders, rich. For industrial workers
living in crowded, polluted
Viking raiders, Mongol horsemen,
castle sieges, and frequent cities, life expectancy was
famines, the Middle Ages were much lower. More than
a dangerous time for kings and 500,000 Americans died
serfs alike. The worst event of in the terrible slaughter
of the American Civil War
all was the Black Death
(bubonic plague), which between 1861 and 1865.
wiped out one third of Europe’s
population in the 1340s.

THE MOST DANGEROUS AGE 185
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