Geographic Exploration

I

Introduction

Geographic Exploration, process of conscious discovery by human beings of the world around them. The human species is highly mobile, migrating and traveling to every corner of the globe. In this, we are not unique. What sets human beings apart from other living creatures is our ability to discover. Many other creatures share humankind’s curiosity, but we alone can communicate our discoveries. Human societies acquire a collective awareness of their known world, and the most adventurous have the urge to discover what lies beyond and to return to describe their findings: These are the explorers.

This article deals with the exploration of Earth’s surface. For information on the exploration of regions beyond Earth, see Space Exploration.

II

To Explore or Not to Explore?

The exploration of Earth, and now the space beyond it, has proceeded from many different sources and perspectives. Chinese, Europeans, Africans, Polynesians, and Native Americans all explored the frontiers of the regions they knew. The pace of this exploration has been uneven: extraordinarily quick in some periods, with long intervals when little has happened.

Some cultures have felt the need to explore, others appear to have deliberately turned inward. Some perhaps did explore but never recorded their findings. Some societies lacked the necessary technology, and others seem to have been so highly adapted to their environment that they remained within it. An unusual case of a “nonexploring” society was Japan. Early contact with the outside world was limited to an occasional embassy to China and trips by pilgrims to the mainland. As late as 1500 the Japanese had not yet fully explored the northern island of Hokkaidō, part of the main Japanese archipelago. The reasons for this lack of interest are not clear, but as time passed the closed attitude became formalized when Japanese people were forbidden to travel abroad, and by government edict Japanese ships were limited in size and had to be built to designs only suitable to sail close inshore.

---

---

Still other cultures made great bursts of exploration, and then abandoned the quest. In the first quarter of the 15th century, the emperor of China repeatedly sent out his courtier Zheng He to explore the world. After seven unprecedented voyages throughout the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, the Chinese administration abruptly cancelled all further trips, and the country reverted to its traditional policy of seclusion. Some societies lost the ability to explore. Many island cultures of the Pacific Ocean eventually lost the technological know-how to construct vessels capable of the transoceanic travel that originally brought their ancestors there. These peoples thus became confined to their islands.

III

Motives of Exploration

Why explore? The driving forces for exploration are complex, and have changed in response to social and historical circumstance, as well as the advances of enabling technology.

A

Migration by Land and Sea

We can only surmise that the very earliest explorations by preliterate peoples were driven by the need to tap new resources—such as hunting and fishing grounds, or pastures when the old ones became inadequate or exhausted—or in response to social pressures. Groups of people may have been forced to explore after being pushed out of their homeland by warfare or overpopulation within a region.

To these early peoples climatic change could have opened up new regions or closed off others. A severe drought in an area on the margin of a desert might cause people to move. A very cold winter might create strong enough sea ice for people to cross a hitherto unbridgeable gulf. These early motives can be characterized as primarily of necessity and, less often, of opportunity. This original exploration distributed people into different corners of the earth, separating them. It is the reverse process, when the settled and different cultures began to get in touch again, or find uninhabited lands, that is now thought of as exploration.

The furthest journeys of exploration have been by sea, as water was the easiest medium for long-distance travel and water covers most of the globe. Maritime cultures thus had an inherent advantage in having an open horizon towards the sea. The earliest known long-distance sailor-explorers are, not surprisingly, associated with the greatest body of water, the Pacific Ocean.

By 1000 bc the ancestors of the Polynesian people had reached the Pacific island of Tonga and the Samoa Islands from southeastern Asia. Their descendants then made voyages of exploration surpassing anything achieved in the West until modern times—by ad 1200 they had reached New Zealand, Hawaii, and Easter Island. One motive for the great Polynesian voyages was the need to find new land for settlement.

To set out into the Pacific required superb boats—which the Polynesians had in their double-hulled voyaging canoes—but above all it needed self-confidence in seafaring and navigation, and an outward-looking view of their environment. The Polynesians were able to postulate the existence of other islands based on observation of natural phenomena such as clouds, currents, and the migration paths of birds, and they had the confidence to launch upon the ocean.

	More from Encarta
	•  7 tips for funding an online degree •  How to succeed in the fashion industry without being a top designer •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain