European Settlement of the Americas: The Real StoryOne of the most important events in the history of the last half millennium is the European "discovery" of the Americas. The traditional story of contact explains the Europeans' eventual success by giving credit to the Europeans' superior technology and military prowess. If traditional history mentions luck, it is to explain the luck of Europeans in finding such a sparsely populated “pristine” continent. While it is true that European naval technology was more sophisticated than that of the native peoples of the Americas, European conquest and exploration of the Americas was the result as much of three non-technological factors as of the sophistication of European naval technology. The first was Europe's relative backwardness compared to the Middle and Far East, the second was macroevolutionary factors such as geography and the relative lack of natural resources, and the third was sheer luck. Europe's primary motivation for westward exploration was the desire for access to trade with the Far East. It was the relative backwardness of the continent that prevented them from achieving this access through eastward movement. The land route to the Indies was blocked due to European inability to compete with the Turks, whose Ottoman Empire extended along major trade routes. Carlo Cippola points out the irony of the fact that while Europeans expanded across the sea, "on its eastern border they retreated spiritlessly under the pressure of Turkish forces." (Note 1) As a result, European nations who wanted to be able to trade with China and the rest of the Indies for goods such as silk and spices were forced to find another route, as they were not strong enough militarily to fight the Turks upon landing and gain access through the Middle East. The second factor of backwardness that stimulated westward exploration was the fragmented nature of the European political system. Because the continent was home to many separate and competing nation-states, each country was forced to find its own path. This competition also increased the desire for Eastern goods, as these goods represented wealth and therefore the ability to pay for costly wars and triumph over neighboring states. If the European continent had been a politically united body, the desire for eastern goods might have been less and westward exploration of the Americas would never have occurred as all of Europe could have benefited from the Portuguese route to the Indies around Africa..