What were the motivations behind European exploration of distant lands?

The European expansion were money, religious zeal, and honor in other words.

Economy : One of the main negative aspects of globalization is the strong contamination of several countries in the event of an economic crisis in a country or economic bloc of great importance. The clearest example of this is the 2008 economic crisis in the United States. It quickly spread to the four corners of the world, generating unemployment, lack of credit in the markets, abrupt drops in stock markets, bankruptcies of companies, decreased investments and much distrust. The same happened in 2011 with the economic crisis in Europe. Culture: According to critics of globalization, the process of world integration was built on the basis of the European model of culture and civilization. Thus all forms of knowledge and behavior would have been established on the basis of Eurocentric morality standards, suppressing traditional peoples and cultures of other countries, considered "inferior" by the dominant ideology.