Explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe.
Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals.
Methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps.
New food, plants, and animals were exchanged between the colonies and Europe.
Indigenous people were decimated by Europeans, from a combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres.
The work force needed to support the massive plantations in the New World, led to a 300 year slave trade that had an enormous impact on Africa.
The impact persists to this day, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the "developing" world, while colonizers are the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and annual income.
