Introduction 12

Chapter 1: Early Explorers 21Exploration of the Atlantic Coastlines 22 Hanno 23 Pytheas 24 Erik the Red 25 Lief Eriksson the Lucky 26 Vinland 27Persian and Roman Explorations 29 Pillars of Heracles 30East-West Contact in Eurasia 32 Travels of Ibn Bat·t·ut·ah 33 Travels of Marco Polo 39 Silk Road 42 Zheng He 45

Chapter 2: The Age of Discovery 48

The Sea Route East by South to Cathay 50

Bartolomeu Dias and the Cape of Good Hope 51

Vasco da Gama and the Route to India 53 The First Voyage 54 The Second Voyage 56 The Third Voyage 57Columbus’s Voyages

to the New World 58 Preparation for the First Voyage 59 The First Voyage 61 The Second and Third Voyages 64 The Fourth Voyage

and Final Years 69 Columbus’s Journals 73Vespucci’s Travels to South America 74 Vespucci’s Namesake 76Magellan and the

Circumnavigation of the Earth 7749

CONTENTS

Allegiance to Spain 79 Discovery of the

Strait of Magellan 80 Circumnavigation of the Globe 81 Strait of Magellan 82

Chapter 3: Colonial Exploration of the New World 83

Spain: The Conquests 83 Balboa Reaches the Pacific 85 Cortés and the

Conquest of the Aztecs 87 Chocolate 92 Francisco Pizarro and the

Conquest of the Incas 93 Francisco de Orellana 96 De Soto and the Discovery

of the Mississippi River 97 Coronado’s Expeditions in

Southwestern North America 99 Juan Ponce de León: Florida

and the Fountain of Youth 101 St. Augustine 102France in North America 104 Verrazzano’s Exploration

of the Eastern Coast 105 Cartier’s Exploration

of the St. Lawrence River 106 The St. Lawrence River

and Seaway 108 Samuel de Champlain 109 Quebec 112 La Salle’s Exploration

of the Interior 115 Jolliet and Marquette 118

Chapter 4: Journeys of Inquiry 120Tasman’s Discoveries

in the South Pacific 122 Dutch East India Company 124

110

114

Drake’s Circumnavigation 125 Drake Passage 128La Pérouse and Dumont D’Urville’s

Explorations of the Pacific 129 La Perouse Strait 131Voyages of James Cook 131 Early Career 132 Voyages and Discoveries 132 Georg Forster 135Humboldt’s Exploration

of South America 135 Peru Current 138Into the Heart of Africa 139 Livingstone’s Journeys

into the Continental Centre 140 Stanley’s Explorations 147 Victoria Falls 148 Ituri Forest 153 Richard Burton

and the Source of the Nile 156 Lake Victoria 158

Chapter 5: Arctic Exploration 160English and Dutch Exploration of

the Eurasian Arctic 160Hudson’s Expeditions 162 The Search for the

Northeast Passage 163 The Voyage to Hudson Bay 165Early Russian Exploration 166Conquest of the Northeast Passage 170The Northwest Passage 173 19th Century

Attempts at the Passage 175 Traverses of the

Northwest Passage Since 1900 181The North Pole 181 The Fram Expedition 183 Fridtjof Nansen 185 The Race for the Pole 186 Matthew Henson 190 Nautilus and Skate 193

149

188

Scientific Exploration 194 Svalbard 194 The Russian Arctic 195 Greenland 197 The North American Arctic 199 The Arctic Ocean 202

Chapter 6: Exploration of Antarctica 205

Voyages of Bellingshausen, Bransfield, and Palmer 206

Palmer Land 207Voyages of Dumont d’Urville,

Wilkes, and Ross 208 Ross Ice Shelf 209The “Heroic Age” of Exploration 211 Discovery of the Antarctic Poles 212 South Pole 213 Shackleton and Scott’s

Ill-Fated Attempts 213 Amundsen’s

Successful Expedition 217Exploration Since 1920 219 Ann Bancroft 220 Technological Advancements

in Exploration 220 Little America 224 National Rivalries and Claims 224Scientific Exploration 228 The Development of the IGY 229 Post-IGY Research 231

Chapter 7: The Quest for Everest 235

Early Expeditions 235 Attempt of 1922 237 Attempt of 1924 238 Attempt of 1933 240 Reconnaissance of 1935 241 Attempts of 1936 and 1938 241 Royal Geographical Society 242

216

218

272

274

Golden Age of Everest Climbs 243 Spring Attempt of 1952 243 Autumn Attempt of 1952 244 The Historic Ascent of 1953 245 Everest-Lhotse, 1956 248 Attempts of 1960 248 The U.S. Ascent of 1963 249 The Indian Ascent of 1965 250Developments 1965 to 1980 250 The Southwest Face 251 The First Ascent by a Woman 252 The West Ridge Direct Ascent 253 Climbing Without

Supplemental Oxygen 253 The North Approach 255The 1980s 256 First Solo Climb 256 Further Exploration from Tibet 257 Developments in Nepal 258 The End of an Era 259Notable Climbers 260 George Mallory 261 John Hunt 262 Edmund Hillary 263 Tenzing Norgay 265 Reinhold Messner 266

Chapter 8: Reaching for Great Heights and Depths 268

Auguste Piccard and Early Ascents into the Stratosphere 268

Subsequent Stratospheric Flights 270Superpressure Balloons 271Introduction of the Bathysphere 273 William Beebe 273Auguste Piccard and the

Development of the Bathyscaphe 275

Jacques Piccard and the Mesoscaphe 276

Mariana Trench 278

Chapter 9: Notable Archaeological Finds 279

Pompeii 279 History 280 History of Excavations 282 Description of the Remains 283 Influence on European Culture 286 Importance as Historical Source 287 Giuseppe Fiorelli 289Troy 290 Geography 290 Archaeology 291 Heinrich Schliemann 293 Wilhelm Dörpfeld 295Knossos 296 History 297 Palace of Minos 298 Sir Arthur Evans 300Machu Picchu 301 Site and Excavation 302 Architecture and Tourism 304 Hiram Bingham 307Valley of the Kings and Tutankhamen 308 Valley of the Kings 309 Tutankhamen and His Tomb 310 Howard Carter 314Easter Island 316 Archaeology 316 Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki 320Olduvai Gorge 321 The Fossil Beds 322 The Leakey Family 323 National Geographic Society 325

Glossary 328For Further Reading 330Index 333

302

317

212121

The motives that spur human beings to examine their environment are many. Strong among them are the

satisfaction of curiosity, the pursuit of trade, the spread of religion, and the desire for security and political power. At various times and in distinct places, different motives are dominant. Sometimes one motive inspires discovery, and another motive may inspire the individuals who carry out the search.

The threads of geographical exploration are continu-ous and, being entwined one with another, are diffi cult to separate. Three major phases of investigation may never-theless be distinguished. The fi rst phase is the exploration of the Old World centred on the Mediterranean Sea. The second is the so-called Age of Discovery, during which, in the search for sea routes to Cathay (the name by which China was known to medieval Europe), a New World was found. The third is the establishment of the political, social, and commercial relationships of the New World to the Old and the elucidation of the major physical features of the continental interiors—in short, the delineation of the modern world.

However, as the general parameters of the physical world became known, interest grew in scientifi c inquiry. As the voyages to claim territory or secure trading rights were completed, people increasingly sought to system-atically study the natural world—its physical attributes, fl ora, and fauna—and, ultimately, humanity’s past. This human curiosity has always led individuals to seek Earth’s extremes, be they its remote polar regions, its highest mountains, or its greatest ocean depths.

From the time of the earliest recorded history to the beginning of the 15th century, Western knowledge of the

Early ExplorersChapter 1:

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The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations That Changed the Modern World7 7

world widened from a river valley surrounded by moun-tains or desert (the views of Babylonia and Egypt) to a Mediterranean world with hinterlands extending from the Sahara to the Gobi deserts and from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans (the views of Greece and Rome). It later expanded again to include the far northern lands beyond the Baltic and another and dazzling civilization in the Far East (the medieval view).

Exploration of thE atlantic coastlinEs

Beyond the Pillars of Heracles (the Strait of Gibraltar), the Carthaginians (from the Phoenician city of Carthage in what is now Tunisia), holding both shores of the strait, early ventured out into the Atlantic Ocean. A Greek translation of a Punic (Carthaginian) inscription states that Hanno, a Carthaginian, was sent forth “to found cities.” Even allow-ing for a possible great exaggeration of numbers, this expedition, if it occurred, can hardly have been the first exploratory voyage along the coast of West Africa; indeed, Herodotus reports that Phoenicians circumnavigated the continent about 600 BCE. Some scholars think that Hanno reached only the desert edge south of the Atlas; other schol-ars identify the “deep river infested with crocodiles and hippopotamuses” with the Sénégal River; and still others believe that the island where men “scampered up steep rocks and pelted us with stones” was an island off the coast of Sierra Leone. There is no record that Hanno’s voyage was followed up before the era of Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese prince of the 15th century.

About the same time, Himilco, another Carthaginian, set forth on a voyage northward. He explored the coast of Spain, reached Brittany, and in his four-month cruise may have visited Britain. Two centuries later, about 300 BCE,

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Hanno

The Carthaginian Hanno conducted a voyage of explora-tion and colonization to the west coast of Africa sometime during the 5th century BCE. Setting sail with 60 vessels holding 30,000 men and women, Hanno founded Thymiaterion (now Kenitra, Mor.) and built a temple at Soloeis (Cape Cantin, now Cape Meddouza). He then founded five additional cities in and around present Morocco, including Carian Fortress (Greek: Karikon Teichos) and Acra (Agadir). The Carian Fortress is perhaps to be identified with Essaouira on the Moroccan coast, where archaeological remains of Punic settlers have been found. Farther south he founded Cerne, possibly on the Río de Oro, as a trading post. He evidently reached the coast of present Gambia or of Sierra Leone and may have ventured as far as Cameroon. An account of his voyage was written in the temple of Baal at Carthage and survives in a 10th-century-CE Greek manuscript known as Periplus of Hannon, which claims to be an ancient Greek translation from the Punic inscription. Modern scholars doubt whether Hanno actually continued beyond Morocco.

Carthaginian power at the gate of the Mediterranean tem-porarily slackened as a result of squabbles with the Greek city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, so Pytheas, a Greek explorer of Massilia (Marseille), sailed through.

It was not Mediterranean folk but Northmen from Scandinavia, emigrating from their difficult lands centuries later, who carried exploration farther in the North Atlantic. From the 8th to the 11th century, bands of Northmen, mainly Swedish, trading southeastward across the Russian plains, were active under the name of Varangians in the

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The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations That Changed the Modern World7 7

PytHeas

The navigator, geographer, and astronomer Pytheas (fl. 300 BCE) was the first Greek to visit and describe the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of Europe. Though his princi-pal work, On the Ocean, is lost, something is known of his ventures through the Greek historian Polybius (c. 200–c. 118 BCE).

Sailing from the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic, Pytheas stopped at the Phoenician city of Gades (present-day Cádiz, Spain), probably followed the European shoreline to the tip of Brittany, and eventually reached Belerium (Land’s End, Cornwall), where he visited the tin mines, famous in the ancient world. He claimed to have explored a large part of Britain on foot; he accurately esti-mated its circumference at 4,000 miles (6,400 km). Pytheas also estimated the distance from north Britain to Massalia (Marseille) at 1,050 miles (1,690 km); the actual distance is 1,120 miles (1,800 km). He visited some north-ern European countries and may have reached the mouth of the Vistula River on the Baltic Sea. He also told of Thule, the northernmost inhabited island, six days’ voy-age from northern Britain and extending at least to the Arctic Circle; the region he visited may have been Iceland or Norway.

Pytheas’s comments on small points—e.g., on the native drinks made of cereals and honey and the use of threshing barns (contrasted with open-air threshing in Mediterranean regions)—show acute observation. His sci-entific interests appear from his calculations made with a sundial at the summer solstice and from notes on the lengthening days as he traveled northward. He also observed that the polestar is not at the true pole and that the Moon affects tides.

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ports of the Black Sea. At the same time other groups, mainly Danish, raiding, trading, and settling along the coasts of the North Sea, arrived in the Mediterranean in the guise of Normans. Neither the Swedes nor the Danes traveling in these regions were exploring lands that were unknown to civilized Europeans, but it is doubtless that contact with them brought to these Europeans new knowledge of the distant northern lands.

It was the Norsemen of Norway who were the true explorers, though since little of their exploits was known to contemporaries and those accounts were soon forgot-ten, they perhaps added less to the common store of Europe’s knowledge than their less adventurous compatri-ots. About 890 CE, Ohthere of Norway, “desirous to try how far that country extended north,” sailed round the North Cape, along the coast of Lapland to the White Sea. But most Norsemen sailing in high latitudes explored not eastward but westward. Sweeping down the outer edge of Britain, settling in Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, and Ireland, they then voyaged on to Iceland, where in 870 they settled among Irish colonists who had preceded them by some two centuries. The Norsemen may well have arrived piloted by Irish sailors; and Irish refugees from Iceland, fleeing before the Norsemen, may have been the first discoverers of Greenland and Newfoundland, although this is mere conjecture.

Erik the Red

Erik the Red (fl. 10th century), founder of the first European settlement on Greenland (c. 986) and the father of Leif Eriksson, was one of the first Europeans to reach North America. As a child, Erik left his native Norway for west-ern Iceland with his father, Thorvald, who had been exiled

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The Britannica Guide to Explorers and Explorations That Changed the Modern World7 7

for manslaughter. In the Scandinavian style of the time he was known as Erik Thorvaldson and in his youth was nick-named Erik the Red. When Erik was similarly exiled from Iceland about 980, he decided to explore the land to the west (Greenland). That land, visible in distorted form because of the effect of looming (a type of mirage) from the mountaintops of western Iceland, lay across 175 miles (280 km) of water. It had been skirted by the Norwegian Gunnbjörn Ulfsson earlier in the 10th century. Erik sailed in 982 with his household and livestock but was unable to approach the coast because of drift ice. The party rounded the southern tip of Greenland and settled in an area near present Julianehåb (Qaqortoq). During the three-year period of Erik’s exile, the settlers encountered no other people, though they explored to the northwest, discover-ing Disko Island (now Qeqertarsuaq).

Erik returned to Iceland in 986. His descriptions of the territory, which he named Greenland, convinced many people anxious for more habitable land to join a return expedition. Of the 25 ships that sailed from Iceland, only 14 ships and 350 colonists are believed to have landed safely at an area later known as Eystribygdh (Eastern Colony). By the year 1000 there were an estimated 1,000 Scandinavian settlers in the colony, but an epidemic in 1002 considerably reduced the population. Erik’s colony, commemorated in the Icelandic Eiríks saga (“Saga of Erik”; translated in the The Vineland Sagas), gradually died out; but other Norse settlements in Greenland continued and maintained contact with Norway until the 15th century, when communications stopped for more than 100 years.

Leif Eriksson the Lucky

The second of Erik’s three sons, Leif Eriksson (fl. 11th century) is widely held to have been the first European to

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reach the shores of North America. The 13th- and 14th-century Icelandic accounts of his life and additional later evidence show that he was certainly a member of an early Viking voyage to North America, but it remains doubtful whether he led the initial expedition.

Leif sailed from Greenland to Norway in 1000, accord-ing to the Icelandic Eiríks saga, and was there converted to Christianity by the Norwegian king Olaf I Tryggvason. The following year Leif was commissioned by Olaf to urge Christianity upon the Greenland settlers. He sailed off course on the return voyage and landed on the North American continent, at a region he called Vinland. On returning to Greenland, he proselytized for Christianity and converted his mother, who built the first Christian church in Greenland, at Brattahild.

According to the Groenlendinga saga (Grænlendinga saga; “Tale of the Greenlanders”) in the Flateyjarbók (“Songbook”; also translated in The Vineland Sagas)—considered more reliable than the Eiríks saga by many modern scholars—Leif learned of Vinland from the Icelander Bjarni Herjulfsson, who had been there 14 years earlier. The Saga pictures Leif as reaching North America several years after 1000 and visiting Helluland (possibly Labrador) and Markland (possibly Newfoundland) as well as Vinland. Further expeditions to Vinland were then made by Thorvald, Leif ’s brother, and by the Icelander Thorfinn Karlsefni.

Vinland

The exact location of the wooded land in North America that was visited and named by Leif Eriksson is not known, but it was probably somewhere along the Atlantic coast-line of what is now eastern or northeastern Canada. As indicated above, the two saga accounts differ somewhat.