Atlantic Ocean - Exploration, Currents, Marine Life: Advances in archaeological study have strengthened claims by many scholars that various seafaring peoples of the Mediterranean ventured into the open Atlantic before 600 bce and engaged in some transatlantic voyages perhaps as early as 545ce.

During the Age of Discovery, Spain sponsored and financed the transatlantic voyages of the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus, which from 1492 to 1504 marked the start of colonization in the Americas, and the expedition of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan to open a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, which later achieved the first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522.