[JKolios]

Which textbook is that? 1492 is Late Renaissance at the cusp of the Early Modern age.

[narag]

It's not easy to find single events or dates that define a change of historical period, that don't happen overnight and uniformly globally. The arts were indeed more advanced.

But 1492 has a number of interesting events. It's the year that Spain got unified as the first modern state, with a centralized court. That's a crucial event to get over feudalism. Coincidentally it's the same year Columbus reached the Americas, so it's an event relevant to globalization.

Erasmus, also a central figure, was ordained that year.

[poulpy123]

Most of the textbooks use the definition of middle ages to be between the fall of the western Roman empire and the one of the eastern Roman empire