European explorers accumulated navigational and geographic knowledge from captains' reports on tides, wind currents, and surveyed lands, building maps incrementally.

“under immense pressure from external forces and cut off from the core economic power bases of the east the sources of the spice and silk that had driven the global economy historically throughout eurasia are finally forced to innovate key names like prince henry the navigator of portugal work on turning the atlantic ocean from a barrier into a super highway generational knowledge accrued from captains reporting in”

“On tides and wind currents and whatever land they've managed to reconnoiter, building out the map as they go along,”