Renaissance: Beginnings• Mongols reopen Silk Road

– Marco Polo visits China, returns to Europe, writes a book

• Causes people to want to go there and get Chinese goods

• Positives of Black Death– No damage to farmland, goods,

metals– People are happy to be alive and

spend money to erase memories of the plague

• Ottoman Turks conquer Byzantine Empire– Scholars flee to Italy with ancient

texts of the Greeks and Romans

Renaissance: Italy

• Major trading cities: Milan, Florence, Genoa, Venice

• Florence wealthy from wool and banking– Medici family were bankers with political

power• Hired artists and architects to make Florence great

Renaissance: People

• Focus on humans and their abilities and actions (humanism)

•Machiavelli wrote The Prince

•Said rulers should be mean instead of nice

Renaissance: Michelangelo• wrote poetry, carved sculptures, painted

ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci

• Sculptor, architect, town planner, inventor, engineer, mapmaker, painted Mona Lisa

Renaissance: Math/Science

• Square root symbol, plus sign, minus sign

• Earth moves around sun

Renaissance: Across Europe

• People came to Italy to learn and spread ideas across Europe– Northern Europe focused

more on history of Christianity and less on Greeks and Romans

• Northern European artwork looked more real with more scenes from nature than Italian artwork

Renaissance: Gutenberg

• Johan Gutenberg invents printing press with moveable type.– Learning spreads faster than ever before