The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the post-classical age (c. 1500), known as the Middle Ages, through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1800) and is variously demarcated by historians as beginning with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Renaissance period in Europe and Timurid Central Asia, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, and the end of the Reconquista and the Age of Discovery (especially the voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 but also with Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498) and ending around the French Revolution in 1789.
