Respuesta :
Almost nothing is known of Dias’s early life. His supposed descent from one of Prince Henry the Navigator’s pilots is unproved, and his rank was the comparatively modest one of squire of the royal household.
In 1474 King Afonso V entrusted his son, Prince John (later John II), with the supervision of Portugal’s trade with Guinea and the exploration of the western coast of Africa. John sought to close the area to foreign shipping and after his accession in 1481 ordered new voyages of discovery to ascertain the southern limit of the African continent. The navigators were given stone pillars (padrões) to stake the claims of the Portuguese crown. Thus, one of them, Diogo Cão, reached the Congo and sailed down the coast of Angola to Cape Santa Maria at 13°26′ S, where he planted one of John’s markers. Cão was ennobled and rewarded and sailed again: that time he left a marker at 15°40′ S and another at Cape Cross, continuing to 22°10′ S. Royal hopes that he would reach the Indian Ocean were disappointed, and nothing more is heard of Cão. John II entrusted command of a new expedition to Dias. In 1486 rumour arose of a great ruler, the Ogané, far to the east, who was identified with the legendary Christian ruler Prester John. John II then sent Pêro da Covilhã and one Afonso Paiva overland to locate India and Abyssinia and ordered Dias to find the southern limit of Africa.
