The Renaissance
1453. Byzantium falls to Moslems; the last official link to antiquity is severed... The following year, Gutenberg invents the printing press.
1500s. The Reformation. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other Protestants break away from the Catholic Church starting in 1517. Intermittent religious wars climax in the Thirty Years War of 1618, in which a third of Europe is wiped out.
1500s. Age of Discovery. Exploration of the New World opens the eyes of Europeans to new peoples, new animals, new foods. Conquistadors introduce diseases which decimate native Americans, and enslave both locals and imported Africans for work in gold mines and on plantations.