exploration, history of

Historically, exploration was undertaken by nations in the quest for new territory, wealth and power, but the explorers have just as often been individuals, risking dangers and uncertainties through personal zeal, either scientific, religious, or economic.

Records of exploration date back almost as far as written history. Indigenous peoples colonized the Asian steppes, the Polar tundra, and the entire American continent long before European explorers visited and wrote about their experiences, but these large-scale movements are part of prehistory – it is the feats of great individuals that are best remembered. In many instances, these explorers made history by leaving unique written and cartographic records of the places they visited. It is only from these records that historians and geographers are able to trace explorers' routes.

Early exploration The earliest known map of the ancient world dates from the time of Sargon Iof Akkad, around 2300 BC, and shows a small area centred on the Tigris River. The first records of named explorers, however, come from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The walls of the tomb of Harkhuf, a nobleman who lived around 2300 BC, record a spice-trading expedition he led beyond the first cataract of the Nile into the kingdom of Nubia. Over 800 years later, Queen Hatshepsut ordered a great trading expedition to the Kingdom of Punt (probably on the Horn of Africa), which was recorded on her tomb. Over the centuries, the Egyptians established trading links with many countries in the African interior, and Egypt became the principle marketplace for luxury African goods.

However, the best-known of the early explorers were the Phoenicians (see Phoenicia), around the turn of the first millennium BC. They already had flourishing trade links with other Mediterranean civilizations by 800 BC, when the Assyrian invasion of their homeland drove them to establish colonies throughout the Mediterranean. The most famous of these was Carthage (in present-day Tunisia), which controlled access to the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar, and limited the expansion of the Greek city-states that were beginning to explore and colonize the Mediterranean at this time.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the Carthaginians may have circumnavigated Africa around 600 BC. Certainly around 500 BC, Hanno of Carthage led a great expedition to found colonies on the coast of Africa, while another explorer, Himilco, travelled up the Atlantic coast of Europe, possibly reaching the British Isles.

Herodotus' Histories provide a record of the extent of Greek exploration and geographical knowledge at this time, bounded by the Atlantic in the west, the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea in the south, and Persia (Iran) in the east. It was not until around 300 BC that Pytheas of Massilia (Marseille) became the first Greek explorer in the North Atlantic. Pytheas certainly reached Britain, and continued to the far northern kingdom of Thule (probably Norway).

Meanwhile, Greek expansion east from the Mediterranean was driven by Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) and his war with Persia. Alexander's armies pursued the Persians into unknown territories south of the Caspian Sea, eventually reaching the Hindu Kush in northwest India.

The rise to power of the Roman Empire led to a consolidation of most of the known world under one rule. Lands which were previously known only from travellers' tales were brought under the rule of the Romans, and further expansion and exploration quelled disturbances at the Empire's borders. The Empire's stability in the Augustan era (48 BC–AD 68) encouraged a demand for luxury goods, and led to expeditions into the African interior, and by sea to southeast Asia. Claudius Ptolemy's Geography (c. AD 150) formed a record of the known world, including much speculation, that was to influence travellers for nearly 1500 years.

Exploration after Rome The collapse of western civilization with the end of the Roman Empire brought a swift end to European expansion and colonization. The texts of the great classical geographers only survived in the East, where they were soon adopted by Islamic scholars. The Islamic golden age that began when the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid founded his new capital at Baghdad in the 8th century was marked by the reestablishment of trading links with the East Indies, and renewed trade along the ancient Silk Road between Persia and China, which for a period under the Sung dynasty (960–1279) abandoned its ancient isolationism to establish trade and diplomatic links with the West.

Islam produced several great geographies, most notably that of Abu 'Abdullah al-Idrisi (1100–1165), who combined his own first-hand experience with travellers' tales to produce the most accurate picture of the world yet. However, the most remarkable of all Islamic travellers was Ibn Battuta (1304–1370), who spent 30 years of his life travelling in the interior of Africa and on its east coast, and visiting India and China.

The only comparable explorers in Europe through this period were obscure monks and the seafaring Norsemen of Scandinavia, whose raids extended into the Mediterranean. Irish missionaries are believed to have reached Iceland around AD 800, and there are various legendary stories of travellers such as Saint Brendan and the Welsh Prince Madoc who some believe journeyed as far as the Americas. But it is the Norsemen who are best known for their exploration of the North Atlantic, which saw them reach Iceland, Greenland, and ultimately Newfoundland (or Vinland) by about the year 1000, perhaps even founding a short-lived colony there.

The beginnings of Western exploration However, stories of the new world did not reach mainland Europe, and it was not until the 13th century that exploration gained new impetus. The Mongol chief Genghis Khan led his hordes westwards from Central Asia, and their arrival on the threshold of Europe stimulated interest in the East once again. Christian kings including Louis IX of France were at the time embroiled in the Crusades, and despatched missionary explorers such as Wilhelm Ruysbroeck (c.1215–1295) in attempts to convert the Tatars, or at least ally with them against the Muslims. Ruysbroeck's account of his journey to Karakorum in Mongolia was widely read and highly influential at a time when the great classical geographies were reentering the West from the Islamic East. Merchants followed in the wake of these missionaries, including perhaps the most famous family of travellers, the Polos of Venice.

Marco Polo's account of his journey to the China of Kublai Khan around 1260 was extremely widely read and exerted great influence on his successors, but it has recently been called into question by sceptical scholars. Another highly influential traveller's tale of the time was the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a collection of fanciful stories which has been long discounted, but which was the most widely read secular book of the Middle Ages (see Mandeville, John). One myth which the Travels did much to encourage was the belief in Prester John, the king of a mythical Christian kingdom who would come to the aid of Europe against Islam. The search for Prester John became one of the driving forces of European exploration through the rest of the Middle Ages.

The demise of Chinese exploration But while Western visitors to China were increasingly frequent, the Chinese government policy was increasingly isolationist. The final and most successful phase of Chinese exploration and colonialism occurred in the early Ming dynasty under Zheng He. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led a series of armadas exploring the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, and even reaching the Horn of Africa. Zheng He collected tribute, established trade links, and returned to China with many curiosities. However, from 1433 an imperial proclamation forbade contact with the outside world, and many of the records of Zheng He's travels were destroyed.

The golden age of exploration After men such as Marco Polo and Mandeville had brought news of the rich cities and civilizations they had visited on their travels, the focus of European exploration shifted to establishing the best routes to them. Under the patronage of Henry the Navigator, Prince of Portugal, a series of concerted attempts were made to establish a sea route around Africa to India and China. Bartholomeu Diaz led the first mission to round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama reached India by sea and established regular trading links.

The opening up of a sea route to the Indies created a viable alternative to passing through Muslim lands and paying their taxes, but created another trading monopoly for the Portuguese. Meanwhile the search for another route to the East continued.

The new world There had long been a notion that the riches of the East could be reached by sailing westwards, but Christopher Columbus was the first to put the theory to the test, with the backing of the Spanish monarchy. Columbus, new that the world was in fact round, but underestimated its size, and therefore when he made landfall in the Bahamas for the first time, he believed he had actually reached southeast Asia.

In 1497 the Genoese sailor John Cabot reached the coast of North America on board the Mathew, and in 1500 a Portuguese expedition discovered Brazil. It gradually became apparent that the New World was in fact an entire continent, a fact first recognized by Amerigo Vespucci, and merchants and explorers started to search for a route around it to the East Indies.

Exploration of the Americas The first successful route around the tip of South America was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through the straits named after him in 1520, discovering the Pacific Ocean and crossing it to complete the first circumnavigation of the globe. Meanwhile, the first explorations of the continent's interior were being made. In Central and South America, Spanish conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro carved out huge territories, driven on by a combination of missionary zeal and greed – the new legend of El Dorado, the city of gold, fulfilled the same role in the New World as Prester John had in the Old World.

In the North, exploration was led by Spaniards, such as Juan Ponce de León, and Frenchmen such as Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain. British explorers and adventurers including Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh also played an important role in the exploration and settlement of the new continent.

The northern passages Although the passages to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn had now been established, many still hoped for a faster and easier route through northern waters. The search for the Northeast and Northwestern Passages became a focus of exploration for several centuries.

The Northeast Passage, to the north of Russia, had also been mooted for many years. The Muscovy Company under Sebastian Cabot was formed in 1553 and expeditions under Sir Hugh Willoughby (died 1554) and Richard Chancellor tried to find the passage for England. Around 1600, the Dutch made renewed attempts to find the passage, the most notable of which was led by Willem Barents, who overwintered in the Arctic for the first time, but died before a rescue expedition arrived. It was not until over 250 years later (in 1878–9) that the Finnish-born Swede Erik Nordenskjöld finally navigated the Northeast Passage.

The Northwest Passage to the north of Canada seemed far more promising at first, and was explored from 1576 by Humphrey Gilbert, John Dee, Jacques Cartier, Sir Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Henry Hudson, Robert Bylot, and William Baffin. In spite of their heroic and often fatal efforts, the passage was not successfully navigated until 1903–05, by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.

Imperial explorations The rise of European colonialism during the 18th and 19th centuries was a spur to exploration of those areas of the world that remained unknown to the West. Australia and New Zealand were investigated for the first time by Abel Tasman, an employee of the Dutch East India Company. One of the aims of Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe at southern latitudes had been to seek the supposed great southern continent, ‘Terra Australis Incognita’, a hangover from Ptolemy's Geography. There followed voyages by William Dampier, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, John Byron, Samuel Wallis, and Phillip Carteret. The British naval explorer Captain James Cook is best known for his explorations of Australasia and the Pacific, although he also investigated both the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

The coasts of Africa had been touched by Europeans, but the vast interiors were still unknown to them in the mid-18th century. Mungo Park tried to follow the course of the Niger River in the 1790s, but it was only in the 19th century that much exploration was done. Richard Lander in West Africa, David Livingstone in Central Africa, James Bruce in Ethiopia, and Richard Burton, John Speke, and James Grant in East Africa were the chief pioneers. Over the same period Australia was explored by men such as Charles Sturt, John Eyre, Robert Burke, and William Wills.

Political intrigues between the great European powers became the main spur to further exploration in regions such as Arabia and central Asia, which had long been closed to Europeans. Richard Burton was among several explorers who risked their lives travelling in Arabia, while a series of British and Russian adventurers played the ‘Great Game’ in the lands between Russia and Afghanistan, gradually extending their knowledge and influence into the central Asian kingdoms. By the turn of the 20th century, even the great forbidden kingdom of Tibet was opened to the Europeans.

The polar regions The Arctic and Antarctic regions truly began to capture the interest of explorers from the mid-19th century. Until that time, they had chiefly been the preserve of commercial sealers and whalers, and navigators trying to find passages through them. However, in 1828 Sir William Parry made the first notable attempt to reach the North Pole, departing from Spitsbergen (Svalbard) and reaching a latitude of 82° N. Fridtjof Nansen made an attempt in 1893, and in 1909 the American Robert Peary became the first man to cross the ice to the Pole. Since then there have been many expeditions, including a submarine voyage in 1958 by the US Navy.

The date of the discovery of Antarctica is unknown, but it is likely to have been know to seal traders from the late 18th century. The first circumnavigation was not completed until 1819–21 by Fabian Bellingshausen of the Russian imperial navy, and the first scientific expedition to survey the continent was led by the Briton James Ross in 1839–43. Leonard Christensen was the first man to set foot on the continent (1894) and many parties explored it in the early years of the 20th century; the Britons Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton made major contributions, while the Norwegian Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the pole in 1911.

In 1957–8, the many nations with claims on Antarctic territory declared the International Geophysical Year, which saw the first successful crossing of the continent by Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary, and later gave rise to the Antarctic Treaty, ensuring the continent's peaceful use for scientific purposes only. One of the few remaining records in exploration was claimed in 1982 by the British explorer Ranulph Fiennes, when he completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth via both poles.

The modern age of exploration Modern exploration is mainly an endeavour of adventurers and scientists. For the lone explorer or small team, the number of unexplored areas of the globe is dwindling rapidly, and often the challenge is not to discover uncharted territory, but to go there in new ways and with less technological assistance, pushing their endurance to the limits. The opening up of new frontiers is a task that has now largely passed to scientific and commercial organizations with large budgets. The new explorers are those who make new discoveries in the depths of the sea (see oceanography), and those who plan manned and robotic missions to the stars (see space probe).