European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most important conquests were those of Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean (1492-1502); Hernán Cortés in Aztec Mexico (1519-1521), Francisco Pizzaro and Diego de Almagro in Inca Peru (1528-1532), and Juan de Grijalva (1518) and Hernán Cortés (1519; 1524-1525) in Mayan Yucatán and Guatemala.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original article at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1920/the-iberian-conquest-of-the-americas/.
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