European exploration, exploration of regions of Earth for scientific, commercial,

religious, military, and other purposes by Europeans, beginning about the 4th
century BCE.

European exploration: early voyagesMap depicting the European exploration of the New World in the 15th
and 16th centuries, including the voyages made by Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and
Amerigo Vespucci, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián del Cano, Giovanni da
Verrazzano, Jacques Cartier, Sir Francis Drake, and others. The lines of demarcation represent an early division
between the territory of Spain (to the west) and Portugal (to the east).Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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 different times and in
different places, different motives are dominant. Sometimes one motive inspires the
promoters of discovery, and another motive may inspire the individuals who carry
out the search.
For a discussion of the society that engaged in these explorations, and their effects
on intra-European affairs, see European history. The earliest European empires are
discussed in ancient Greek civilization and ancient Rome.
The threads of geographical exploration are continuous and, being entwined one
with another, are difficult to separate. Three major phases of investigation may
nevertheless be distinguished. The first 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, and 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.
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The Exploration Of The Old World

From the time of the earliest recorded history to the beginning of the 15th century,
Western knowledge of the world widened from a river valley surrounded by
mountains or desert (the views of Babylonia and Egypt) to a Mediterranean world
with hinterlands extending from the Sahara to the Gobi Desert and from the
Atlantic to the Indian Ocean (the view 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).
The earliest known surviving map, dating probably from the time of Sargon of
Akkad (about 2334–2279 BCE), shows canals or rivers—perhaps the Tigris and a
tributary—and surrounding mountains. The rapid colonization of the shores of the
Mediterranean and of the Black Sea by Phoenicia and the Greek city-states in the
1st millennium BCE must have been accompanied by the exploration of
their hinterlands by countless unknown soldiers and traders. Herodotus prefaces
his History (written in the 5th century BCE) with a geographical description of the
then known world: this introductory material reveals that the coastlines of the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea had by then been explored.
Stories survive of a few men who are credited with bringing new knowledge from
distant journeys. Herodotus tells of five young adventurers of the tribe of the
Nasamones living on the desert edge of Cyrenaica in North Africa, who journeyed
southwest for many months across the desert, reaching a great river flowing from
west to east; this presumably was the Niger, although Herodotus thought it to be the
Upper Nile.

European exploration
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 Earth exploration

Exploration of the Atlantic coastlines

Beyond the Pillars of Hercules (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. A Greek translation of a Punic
(Carthaginian) inscription states that Hanno, a Carthaginian, was sent forth about
500 BCE with 60 ships and 30,000 colonists “to found cities.” Even allowing 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 scholars 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, Carthaginian
power at the gate of the Mediterranean temporarily 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. His story is known only
from fragments of the work of a contemporary historian, Timaeus (who lived in the
4th and 3rd centuries BCE), as retold by the Roman savant Pliny the Elder, the
Greek geographer Strabo, and the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, all of whom
were critical of its truth. It is probable that Pytheas, having coasted the shores of
the Bay of Biscay, crossed from the island of Ouessant (Ushant), off the French
coast of Brittany, to Cornwall in southwestern England, perhaps seeking tin. He
may have sailed around Britain; he describes it as a triangle and also relates that the
inhabitants “harvest grain crops by cutting off the ears…and storing them in
covered granges.” Around Thule, “the northernmost of the British Isles, six days
sail from Britain,” there is “neither sea nor air but a mixture like sea-lung…binds
everything together,” a reference perhaps to drift ice or dense sea fog. Thule has
been identified with Iceland (too far north), with Mainland island of the Shetland
group (too far south), and perhaps, most plausibly, with Norway. Pytheas returned
to Brittany and explored “beyond the Rhine”; he may have reached the Elbe. The
voyage of Pytheas, like that of Hanno, does not seem to have been followed up.
Herodotus concludes by saying, “Whether the sea girds Europe round on the north
none can tell.”
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 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 that little soon forgotten, they
perhaps added less to the common store of Europe’s knowledge than their less
adventurous compatriots. 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 surmise. The
saga of Erik the Red (Eiríks saga rauda; also called Thorfinns saga Karlsefnis),
gives the story of the Norse discovery of Greenland in 982; the west coast was
explored, and at least two settlements were established on it. About 1000 CE,
one Bjarni Herjulfsson, on his way from Iceland to Greenland, was blown off
course far to the southwest; he saw an unknown shore and returned to tell his
tale. Leif, Erik’s son, together with some 30 others, set out in 1001 to explore. They
probably reached the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland; some think that the
farthest point south reached by the settlers, as described in the sagas, fits best
with Maryland or Virginia, but others contend that the lands about the Gulf of St.
Lawrence are more probably designated. The area was named Vinland, as grapes
grew there, but it has been suggested that the “grapes” referred to were in fact
cranberries. Attempts at colonization were unsuccessful; the Norsemen withdrew,
and, although the Greenland colonies lingered on for some four centuries, little
knowledge of these first discoveries came down to colour the vision of the seamen
of Cádiz or Bristol. The voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot had
their strongest inspirations in quite other traditions.
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The exploration of the coastlines of the Indian Ocean
and the China Sea
Trade, across the land bridges and through the gulfs linking those parts of Asia,
Africa, and Europe that lie between the Mediterranean and Arabian seas, was
actively pursued from very early times. It is therefore not surprising that
exploratory voyages early revealed the coastlines of the Indian Ocean. Herodotus
wrote of Necho II, king of Egypt in the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE, that
“when he stopped digging the canal…from the Nile to the Arabian Gulf…[he] sent
forth Phoenician men in ships ordering them to sail back by the Pillars of
Hercules.” According to the story, this, in three years, they did. Upon their return,
“they told things…unbelievable by me,” says Herodotus, “namely that in sailing
round Libya they had the sun on the right hand.” Whatever he thought of the story
of the sun, Herodotus was inclined to believe in the voyage: “Libya, that is Africa,
shows that it has sea all round except the part that borders on Asia.” Strabo records
another story with the same theme: one Eudoxus, returning from a voyage to India
about 108 BCE, was blown far to the south of Cape Guardafui. Where he landed he
found a wooden prow with a horse carved on it, and he was told by the Africans
that it came from a wrecked ship of men from the west.
About 510 BCE Darius the Great, king of Persia, sent one of his officers, Scylax of
Caria, to explore the Indus. Scylax traveled overland to the Kabul River, reached
the Indus, followed it to the sea, sailed westward, and, passing by the Persian
Gulf (which was already well known), explored the Red Sea, finally arriving at
Arsinoë, near modern Suez. The greater part of the campaigns of the famous
conqueror Alexander the Great were military exploratory journeys. The earlier
expeditions through Babylonia and Persia were through regions already familiar to
the Greeks, but the later ones through the enormous tract of land from the south of
the Caspian Sea to the mountains of the Hindu Kush brought the Greeks a great
deal of new geographical knowledge. Alexander and his army crossed the
mountains to the Indus valley and then made a westward march from the lower
Indus to Susa through the desolate country along the southern edge of the Iranian
plateau; Nearchus, his admiral, in command of the naval forces of the expedition,
waited for the favourable monsoon and then sailed from the mouth of the Indus to
the mouth of the Euphrates, exploring the northern coast of the Persian Gulf on his
way.
As Roman power grew, increasing wealth brought increasing demands for Oriental
luxuries; this led to great commercial activity in the eastern seas. As the coasts
became well known, the seasonal character of the monsoonal winds was skillfully
used; the southwest monsoon was long known as Hippalus, named for a sailor who
was credited with being the first to sail with it direct from the Gulf of Aden to the
coast of the Indian peninsula. During the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian in
the 1st century BCE, Western traders reached Siam
(now Thailand), Cambodia, Sumatra, and Java; a few also seem to have penetrated
northward to the coast of China. In 161 CE, according to Chinese records, an
“embassy” came from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius to the emperor Huan-
ti, bearing goods that Huan-ti gratefully received as “tribute.” Ptolemy, however,
did not know of these voyages: he swept his peninsula of Colmorgo (Malay)
southwestward to join the eastward trend of his coast of Africa, thus creating a
closed Indian Ocean. He presumably did not believe the story of the
circumnavigation of Africa. As the 2nd century CE passed and Roman power
declined, trade with the eastern seas did not cease but was gradually taken over by
Ethiopians, Parthians, and Arabs. The Arabs, most successful of all, dominated
eastern sea routes from the 3rd to the 15th century. In the tales of derring-do
of Sindbad the Sailor (a hero of the collection of Arabian tales called The Thousand
and One Nights), there may be found, behind the fiction, the knowledge of these
adventurous Arab sailors and traders, supplying detail to fill in the outline of the
geography of the Indian Ocean.

MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC

 History of Europe: Discovery of the New World
 India: India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858
 United States: The European background
 Japan: The arrival of the Europeans
 Canada: European contact and early exploration
 History of Latin America: The overseas tradition
 Western Africa: The beginnings of European activity
 Portugal: Conquest and exploration
 Oceanic art and architecture: Oceanic art and architecture after European
contact
 Atlantic Ocean: Ancient exploration

The land routes of Central Asia

The prelude to the Age of Discovery, however, is to be found neither in the Norse
explorations in the Atlantic nor in the Arab activities in the Indian Ocean but,
rather, in the land journeys of Italian missionaries and merchants that linked the
Mediterranean coasts to the China Sea. Cosmas Indicopleustes, an Alexandrian
geographer writing in the 6th century, knew that Tzinitza (China) could be reached
by sailing eastward, but he added: “One who comes by the overland route from
Tzinitza to Persia makes a very short cut.” Goods had certainly passed this way
since Roman times, but they usually changed hands at many a mart, for
disorganized and often warring tribes lived along the routes. In the 13th century the
political geography changed. In 1206 a Mongol chief assumed the title of Genghis
Khan and, after campaigns in China that gave him control there, turned his
conquering armies westward. He and his successors built up an enormous empire
until, in the late 13th century, one of them, Kublai Khan, reigned supreme from
the Black Sea to the Yellow Sea. Europeans of perspicacity saw the opportunities
that friendship with the Mongol power might bring. If Christian Europe could only
convert the Mongols, this would at one and the same time heavily tip the scales
against Muslim and in favour of Christian power and also give political protection
to Christian merchants along the silk routes to the legendary sources of wealth in
China. With these opportunities in mind, Pope Innocent IV sent friars to “diligently
search out all things that concerned the state of the Tartars” and to exhort them “to
give over their bloody slaughter of mankind and to receive the Christian faith.”
Among others, Giovanni da Pian del Carpini in 1245 and Willem van
Ruysbroeck in 1253 went forth to follow these instructions. Traveling the great
caravan routes from southern Russia, north of the Caspian and Aral seas and north
of the Tien Shan (Tien Mountains), both Carpini and Ruysbroeck eventually
reached the court of the emperor at Karakorum. Carpini returned confident that the
emperor was about to become a Christian; Ruysbroeck told of the city in Cathay
“having walls of silver and towers of gold”; he had not seen it but had been
“credibly informed” of it.
 READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC

history of Europe: Discovery of the New World

In the Iberian Peninsula the impetus of the counteroffensive against the Moors carried the
Portuguese to probe the West African coastline…

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But the greatest of the 13th-century travelers in Asia were the Polos, wealthy
merchants of Venice. In 1260 the brothers Nicolo and Maffeo Polo set out on a
trading expedition to Crimea. After two years they were ready to return to Venice,
but, finding the way home blocked by war, they traveled eastward to Bukhara (now
in Uzbekistan in Central Asia), where they spent another three years. The Polos
then accepted an invitation to accompany a party of Tatar envoys returning to the
court of Kublai Khan at Cambaluc, near Peking (Beijing). The khan received them
well, provided them with a gold tablet as a safe-conduct back to Europe, and gave
them a letter begging the pope to send “some hundred wise men, learned in the law
of Christ and conversant with the seven arts to preach to his people.” The Polos
arrived home, “having toiled three years on the way,” to find that Pope Clement
IV was dead. Two years later they set off again, traveling without the wise men but
taking with them Nicolo’s son, Marco Polo, then a youth of 17. (Marco kept
detailed notes of all he saw and, late in life when a captive of the Genoese, dictated
to a fellow prisoner a book containing an account of his travels and adventures.)
This time the Polos took a different route: starting from the port of Hormuz on
the Persian Gulf, they crossed Persia to the Pamirs and then followed a caravan
route along the southern edge of the Tarim Basin and Gobi Desert to Cambaluc.
Information about the route is interesting, but the great contribution of Marco Polo
to the geographical knowledge of the West lay in his vivid descriptions of the East.
He had tremendous opportunities of seeing China and appreciating its life, for he
was taken into the service of the khan and was sent as an administrator to great
cities, busy ports, and remote provinces, with instructions to write full reports. In
his book he described how, upon every main high road, at a distance apart of 25 or
30 miles (40 to 50 km), there were stations, with houses of accommodation for
travelers, with 400 good horses kept in constant readiness at each station. He also
reported that, along the roads, the great khan had caused trees to be planted, both to
provide shade in summer and to mark the route in winter when the ground was
covered with snow. Marco Polo lived and worked in western China, visiting the
provinces of Shensi (Shaanxi), Szechwan (Sichuan), and Yunnan, as well as the
borders of Burma (now Myanmar). He frequently visited “the noble and
magnificent city of Quinsay [Hangzhou], a name that signifies the Celestial City
and which it merits from its preeminence to all others in the world in point of
grandeur and beauty.” Cipango (Japan) he did not visit, but he heard about it from
merchants and sailors: “It is situated at a distance of 1,500 miles from the mainland.
…They have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible.” The
most detailed descriptions and the greatest superlatives were reserved for
Cambaluc, capital of Cathay, whose splendours were beyond compare; to this city,
he said,
everything that is most rare and valuable in all parts of the world finds its way: …for not
fewer than 1,000 carriages and pack-horses loaded with raw silk make their daily entry; and
gold tissues and silks of various kinds are manufactured to an immense extent.

No wonder that, when Europe learned of these things, it became enthralled. After
17 years, the Venetians were permitted to depart; they returned to Europe by sea.
After visiting Java they sailed through the Strait of Malacca (again proving the
error of Ptolemy); and, landing at Hormuz, they traveled cross-country to Armenia,
and so home to Venice, which they reached in 1295.
A few travelers followed the Polos. Giovanni da Montecorvino, a Franciscan friar
from Italy, became archbishop of Peking and lived in China from 1294 to 1328.
Friar Oderic of Pordenone, an Italian monk, became a missionary, journeying
throughout the greater part of Asia between 1316 and 1330. He reached Peking by
way of India and Malaya, then traveled by sea to Canton; he returned to Europe by
way of Central Asia, visiting Tibet in 1325—the first European to do so. Friar
Oderic’s account of his journeys had considerable influence in his day: it was from
it that the spurious traveler, the English writer Sir John Mandeville, quarried most
of his stories.
Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, an Arab of Tangier, journeyed farther perhaps than any
other medieval traveler. In 1325 he set out to make the traditional pilgrimage
to Mecca, and in some 30 years he visited the greater part of the Old World,
covering, it has been said, more than 75,000 miles (120,700 km). He was the first to
explore much of Arabia; he traveled extensively in India; he
reached Java and Southeast Asia. Then toward the end of his life he returned to the
west, where, after visiting Spain, he explored western Sudan “to the northernmost
province of the Negroes.” He reached the Niger, which he called the Nile, and was
astonished by the huge hippopotamuses “taking them to be elephants.” When he
finally returned to Fès in Morocco he “kissed the hand of the Commander of the
Faithful the Sultan…and settled down under the wing of his bounty.” He wrote a
vivid and perspicacious account of his travels, but his book did not become known
to Christian Europe for centuries. It was Marco Polo’s book that was the most
popular of all. Some 138 manuscripts of it survive: it was translated before 1500
into Latin, German, and Spanish, and the first English translation was published in
1577. For centuries Europe’s maps of the Far East were based on the information
provided by Marco Polo; even as late as 1533 Johannes Schöner, the German
maker of globes, wrote:
Behind the Sinae and the Ceres [legendary cities of Central Asia]…many countries were
discovered by one Marco Polo…and the sea coasts of these countries have now recently
again been explored by Columbus and  Amerigo Vespucci in navigating the Indian Ocean.

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Columbus possessed and annotated a copy of the Latin edition (1483–85) of Marco
Polo’s book, and in his journal he identified many of his own discoveries with
places that Marco Polo describes.
Thus, with Ptolemy in one hand and Marco Polo in the other, the European
explorers of the Age of Discovery set forth to try to reach Cathay and Cipango by
new ways; Ptolemy promised that the way was short, and Marco Polo promised
that the reward was great.

The Age Of Discovery

In the 100 years from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, a combination of
circumstances stimulated men to seek new routes, and it was new routes rather than
new lands that filled the minds of kings and commoners, scholars and seamen.
First, toward the end of the 14th century, the vast empire of the Mongols was
breaking up; thus, Western merchants could no longer be assured of safe-conduct
along the land routes. Second, the Ottoman Turks and the Venetians controlled
commercial access to the Mediterranean and the ancient sea routes from the East.
Third, new nations on the Atlantic shores of Europe were now ready to seek
overseas trade and adventure.
 World map by J.M. Contarini, 1506, depicting the expanding horizons becoming known to European
geographers in the Age of Discovery.Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R.
Freeman & Co. Ltd.

The sea route east by south to Cathay

Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, initiated the first great enterprise of the
Age of Discovery—the search for a sea route east by south to Cathay. His motives
were mixed. He was curious about the world; he was interested in new navigational
aids and better ship design and was eager to test them; he was also a Crusader and
hoped that, by sailing south and then east along the coast of Africa, Arab power
in North Africa could be attacked from the rear. The promotion of profitable trade
was yet another motive; he aimed to divert the Guinea trade in gold and ivory away
from its routes across the Sahara to the Moors of Barbary (North Africa) and
instead channel it via the sea route to Portugal.
 European exploration of the African coast.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski

Expedition after expedition was sent forth throughout the 15th century to explore
the coast of Africa. In 1445 the Portuguese navigator Dinís Dias reached the mouth
of the Sénégal, which “men say comes from the Nile, being one of the most
glorious rivers of Earth, flowing from the Garden of Eden and the earthly
paradise.” Once the desert coast had been passed, the sailors pushed on: in 1455
and 1456 Alvise Ca’ da Mosto made voyages to Gambia and the Cape Verde
Islands. Prince Henry died in 1460 after a career that had brought the colonization
of the Madeira Islands and the Azores and the traversal of the African coast
to Sierra Leone. Henry’s captain, Diogo Cão, discovered the Congo River in 1482.
All seemed promising; trade was good with the riverine peoples, and the coast was
trending hopefully eastward. Then the disappointing fact was realized: the head of a
great gulf had been reached, and, beyond, the coast seemed to stretch endlessly
southward. Yet, when Columbus sought backing for his plan to sail westward
across the Atlantic to the Indies, he was refused—“seeing that King John
II [of Portugal] ordered the coast of Africa to be explored with the intention of
going by that route to India.”
King John II sought to establish two routes: the first, a land and sea route through
Egypt and Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and, the second, a sea
route around the southern shores of Africa, the latter an act of faith, since Ptolemy’s
map showed a landlocked Indian Ocean. In 1487, a Portuguese emissary, Pêro da
Covilhã, successfully followed the first route; but, on returning to Cairo, he
reported that, in order to travel to India, the Portuguese “could navigate by their
coasts and the seas of Guinea.” In the same year, another Portuguese
navigator, Bartolomeu Dias, found encouraging evidence that this was so. In 1487
he rounded the Cape of Storms in such bad weather that he did not see it, but he
satisfied himself that the coast was now trending northeastward; before turning
back, he reached the Great Fish River, in what is now South Africa. On the return
voyage, he sighted the Cape and set up a pillar upon it to mark its discovery.

John II of PortugalHulton Archive/Getty Images

The seaway was now open, but eight years were to elapse before it was exploited.
In 1492 Columbus had apparently reached the East by a much easier route. By the
end of the decade, however, doubts of the validity of Columbus’s claim were
current. Interest was therefore renewed in establishing the sea route south by east to
the known riches of India. In 1497 a Portuguese captain, Vasco da Gama, sailed in
command of a fleet under instructions to reach Calicut (Kozhikode), on India’s
west coast. This he did after a magnificent voyage around the Cape of Storms
(which he renamed the Cape of Good Hope) and along the unknown coast of East
Africa. Yet another Portuguese fleet set out in 1500, this one being under the
command of Pedro Álvarez Cabral; on the advice of da Gama, Cabral steered
southwestward to avoid the calms of the Guinea coast; thus, en route for
Calicut, Brazil was discovered. Soon trading depots, known as factories, were built
along the African coast, at the strategic entrances to the Red Sea and the Persian
Gulf, and along the shores of the Indian peninsula. In 1511 the Portuguese
established a base at Malacca (now Melaka, Malaysia), commanding the straits into
the China Sea; in 1511 and 1512, the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and Java were
reached; in 1557 the trading port of Macau was founded at the mouth of the Canton
River. Europe had arrived in the East. It was in the end the Portuguese, not the
Turks, who destroyed the commercial supremacy of the Italian cities, which had
been based on a monopoly of Europe’s trade with the East by land. But Portugal
was soon overextended; it was therefore the Dutch, the English, and the French
who in the long run reaped the harvest of Portuguese enterprise.
Some idea of the knowledge that these trading explorers brought to the common
store may be gained by a study of contemporary maps. The map of the
German Henricus Martellus, published in 1492, shows the shores of North Africa
and of the Gulf of Guinea more or less correctly and was probably taken from
numerous seamen’s charts. The delineation of the west coast of southern Africa
from the Guinea Gulf to the Cape suggests a knowledge of the charts of the
expedition of Bartolomeu Dias. The coastlines of the Indian Ocean are largely
Ptolemaic with two exceptions: first, the Indian Ocean is no longer landlocked; and
second, the Malay Peninsula is shown twice—once according to Ptolemy and once
again, presumably, according to Marco Polo. The Contarini map of 1506 shows
further advances; the shape of Africa is generally accurate, and there is new
knowledge of the Indian Ocean, although it is curiously treated. Peninsular India
(on which Cananor and Calicut are named) is shown; although too small, it is,
however, recognizable. There is even an indication to the east of it of the Bay of
Bengal, with a great river running into it. Eastward of this is Ptolemy’s India, with
the huge island of Taprobane—a muddled representation of the Indian peninsula
and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). East again, as on the map of Henricus Martellus, the
Malay Peninsula appears twice. Ptolemy’s bonds were hard to break.

The sea route west to Cathay

It is not known when the idea originated of sailing westward in order to reach
Cathay. Many sailors set forth searching for islands in the west; and it was a
commonplace among scientists that the east could be reached by sailing west, but to
believe this a practicable voyage was an entirely different matter. Christopher
Columbus, a Genoese who had settled in Lisbon about 1476, argued that Cipango
lay a mere 2,500 nautical miles west of the Canary Islands in the eastern Atlantic.
He took 45 instead of 60 nautical miles as the value of a degree; he accepted
Ptolemy’s exaggerated west–east extent of Asia and then added to it the lands
described by Marco Polo, thus reducing the true distance between the Canaries and
Cipango by about one-third. He could not convince the Portuguese scientists nor
the merchants of Lisbon that his idea was worth backing; but eventually he
obtained the support of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.
The sovereigns probably argued that the cost of equipping the expedition would not
be very great; the loss, if it failed, could be borne; the gain, should it succeed, was
incalculable—indeed, it might divert to Spain all the wealth of Asia.
On August 3, 1492, Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, with three small ships
manned by Spaniards. From the Canaries he sailed westward, for, on the evidence
of the globes and maps in which he had faith, Japan was on the same latitude.
If Japan should be missed, Columbus thought that the route adopted would land
him, only a little further on, on the coast of China itself. Fair winds favoured him,
the sea was calm, and, on October 12, landfall was made on the Bahama island of
Guanahaní, which he renamed San Salvador (also called Watling Island,
though Samana Cay and other islands have been identified as Guanahaní). With the
help of the local Indians, the ships reached Cuba and then Haiti. Although there
was no sign of the wealth of the lands of Kublai Khan, Columbus nevertheless
seemed convinced that he had reached China, since, according to his reckoning, he
was beyond Japan. A second voyage in 1493 and 1494, searching fruitlessly for the
court of Kublai Khan, further explored the islands of “the Indies.” Doubts seem to
have arisen among the would-be colonists as to the identity of the islands since
Columbus demanded that all take an oath that Cuba was the southeast promontory
of Asia—the Golden Chersonese. On his third voyage, in 1498, Columbus sighted
Trinidad, entered the Gulf of Paria, on the coast of what is now Venezuela, and
annexed for Spain “a very great continent…until today unknown.” On a fourth
voyage, from 1502 to 1504, he explored the coast of Central
America from Honduras to Darien on the Isthmus of Panama, seeking a navigable
passage to the west. What passage he had in mind is obscure; if at this point he still
believed he had reached Asia, it is conceivable that he sought a way
through Ptolemy’s Golden Chersonese into the Indian Ocean.
Columbus’s tenacity, courage, and skill in navigation make him stand out among
the few explorers who have changed substantially ideas about the world. At the
time, however, his efforts must have seemed ill-rewarded: he found no emperor’s
court rich in spices, silks, gold, or precious stones but had to contend with mutinous
sailors, dissident colonists, and disappointed sovereigns. He died at Valladolid in
1506. Did he believe to the end that he indeed had reached Cathay, or did he,
however dimly, perceive that he had found a New World?
Whatever Columbus thought, it was clear to others that there was much to be
investigated, and probably much to be gained, by exploration westward. Not only
in Lisbon and Cádiz but also in other Atlantic ports, groups of men congregated in
hopes of joining in the search. In England, Bristol, with its western outlook and
Icelandic trade, was the port best placed to nurture adventurous seamen. In the
latter part of the 15th century, John Cabot, with his wife and three sons, came to
Bristol from Genoa or Venice. His project to sail west gained support, and with one
small ship, the Matthew, he set out in May 1497, taking a course due west from
Dursey Head, Ireland. His landfall on the other side of the ocean was probably on
the northern peninsula of what is now known as Newfoundland. From there, Cabot
explored southward, perhaps encouraged to do so, even if seeking a westward
passage, by ice in the Strait of Belle Isle. Little is known of John Cabot’s first
voyage, and almost nothing of his second, in 1498, from which he did not return,
but his voyages in high latitudes represented almost as great a navigational feat as
those of Columbus.
The coasts between the landfalls of Columbus and of John Cabot were charted in
the first quarter of the 16th century by Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese
sailors. Sebastian Cabot, son of John, gained a great reputation as a navigator and
promoter of Atlantic exploration, but whether this was based primarily on his own
experience or on the achievements of his father is uncertain. In 1499 Amerigo
Vespucci, an Italian merchant living in Sevilla (Seville), together with the Spanish
explorer Alonso de Ojeda, explored the north coast of South
America from Suriname to the Golfo de Venezuela. His lively and embellished
description of these lands became popular, and Waldseemüller, on his map of 1507,
gave the name America to the southern part of the continent.
The 1506 map of Contarini represented a brave attempt to collate the mass of new
information, true and false, that accrued from these western voyages. The land
explored by Columbus on his third voyage and by Vespucci and de Ojeda in 1499
is shown at the bottom left of the map as a promontory of a great northern bulge of
a continent extending far to the south. The northeast coast of Asia at the top left is
pulled out into a great peninsula on which is shown a big river and some mountains
representing Contarini’s concept of Newfoundland and the lands found by the
Cabots and others. In the wide sea that separates these northern lands from South
America, the West Indies are shown. Halfway between the Indies and the coast of
Asia, Japan is drawn. A legend placed between Japan and China reveals the state of
opinion among at least some contemporary geographers; it presumably refers to the
fourth voyage of Columbus in 1502 and may be an addition to the map. It runs:
Christopher Columbus, Viceroy of Spain, sailing westwards, reached the Spanish islands
after many hardships and dangers. Weighing anchor thence he sailed to the province called
Ciambra [a province which then adjoined Cochinchina].

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Others did not agree with Contarini’s interpretation. To more and more people it
was becoming plain that a New World had been found, although for a long time
there was little inclination to explore it but instead a great determination to find a
way past it to the wealth of Asia. The voyage of the Portuguese
navigator Ferdinand Magellan, from 1519 to 1521, dispelled two long-cherished
illusions: first, that there was an easy way through the barrier and, second, that,
once the barrier was passed, Cathay was near at hand.
Ferdinand Magellan had served in the East Indies as a young man. Familiar with
the long sea route to Asia eastward from Europe via the Cape of Good Hope, he
was convinced that there must be an easier sea route westward. His plan was in
accord with Spanish hopes; five Spanish ships were fitted out in Sevilla, and in
August 1519 they sailed under his command first to the Cape Verde Islands and
thence to Brazil. Standing offshore, they then sailed southward along the east coast
of South America; the estuary of the Río de la Plata was explored in the vain hope
that it might prove to be a strait leading to the Pacific. Magellan’s ships then sailed
south along the coast of Patagonia. The Gulf of St. George, and doubtless many
more small embayments, raised hopes that a strait had been found, only to dash
them; at last at Port Julian, at 49°15′ S, winter quarters were established. In
September 1520 a southward course was set once more, until, finally, on October
21, Magellan found a strait leading westward. It proved to be an extremely difficult
one: it was long, deep, tortuous, rock-walled, and bedevilled by icy squalls and
dense fogs. It was a miracle that three of the five ships got through its 325-mile
(525-km) length. After 38 days, they sailed out into the open ocean. Once away
from land, the ocean seemed calm enough; Magellan consequently named it the
Pacific. The Pacific, however, proved to be of vast extent, and for 14 weeks the
little ships sailed on a northwesterly course without encountering land. Short of
food and water, the sailors ate sawdust mixed with ship’s biscuits and chewed the
leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. At last, on March 6, 1521,
exhausted and scurvy-ridden, they landed at the island of Guam. Ten days later
they reached the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in a local quarrel. The
survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas; thus, sailing westward, they
arrived at last in territory already known to the Portuguese sailing eastward. One
ship attempted, but failed, to return across the Pacific. The remaining ship,
the Vittoria, laden with spices, under the command of the Spanish navigator Juan
Sebastián del Cano, sailed alone across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of
Good Hope, and arrived at Sevilla on September 9, 1522, with a crew of four
Indians and only 17 survivors of the 239 Europeans who had set sail with the
expedition three years earlier. Cano, not having allowed for the fact that his
circumnavigation had caused him to lose a day, was greatly puzzled to find that his
carefully kept log was one day out; he was, however, delighted to discover that the
cargo that he had brought back more than paid for the expenses of the voyage.

first circumnavigation of the globeThe first circumnavigation of the globe was led by Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan, who was charged with finding a Spanish route to the Moluccas. He was killed on Mactan
Island in 1521, but the expedition returned to Spain under the command of Juan Sebastián del
Cano.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski

It is fitting to consider this first circumnavigation as marking the close of the Age
of Discovery. Magellan and his men had demonstrated that Columbus had
discovered a New World and not the route to China and that Columbus’s
“Indies”—the West Indies—were separated from the East Indies by a vast ocean.
Not all the major problems of world geography were, however, now solved. Two
great questions still remained unanswered. Were there “northern passages” between
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans more easily navigable than the dangerous Strait of
Magellan to the south? Was there a great landmass somewhere in the vastness of
the southern oceans—a Terra Australis (“southern land”) that would balance the
northern continents?

The Emergence Of The Modern World

The centuries that have elapsed since the Age of Discovery have seen the end of
dreams of easy routes to the East by the north, the discovery of Australasia and
Antarctica in place of Terra Australis Incognita, and the identification of the major
features of the continental interiors.
While, as in earlier centuries, traders and missionaries often proved themselves also
to be intrepid explorers, in this period of geographical discovery the seeker after
knowledge for its own sake played a greater part than ever before.
The northern passages

Roger Barlow, in his Briefe Summe of Geographie, written in 1540–41, asserted

that “the shortest route, the northern, has been reserved by Divine Providence for
England.”
The concept of a Northeast Passage was at first favoured by the English: it was
thought that, although its entry was in high latitudes, it “turning itself, trendeth
towards the southeast…and stretcheth directly to Cathay.” It was also argued that
the cold lands bordering this route would provide a much needed market for
English cloth. In 1553 a trading company, later known as the Muscovy Company,
was formed with Sebastian Cabot as its governor. Under its auspices numerous
expeditions were sent out. In 1553 an expedition set sail under the command of Sir
Hugh Willoughby; Willoughby’s ship was lost, but the exploration continued under
the leadership of its pilot general, Richard Chancellor. Chancellor and his men
wintered in the White Sea, and next spring “after much adoe at last came to
Mosco.” Between 1557 and 1560, another English voyager, Anthony Jenkinson,
following up this opening, traveled from the White Sea to Moscow, then to the
Caspian, and so on to Bukhara, thus reaching the old east–west trade routes by a
new way. Soon, attempts to find a passage to Cathay were replaced by efforts to
divert the trade of the ancient silk routes from their traditional outlets on the Black
Sea to new northern outlets on the White Sea.
The Dutch next took up the search for the passage. The Dutch navigator William
Barents made three expeditions between 1594 and 1597 (when he died in Novaya
Zemlya, modern Soviet Union). The English navigator Henry Hudson, in the
employ of the Dutch, discovered between 1605 and 1607 that ice blocked the way
both east and west of Svalbard (Spitsbergen). Between 1725 and 1729 and from
1734 to 1743, a series of expeditions inspired by the Danish-Russian explorer
Vitus Bering attempted the passage from the eastern end, but it was not until 1878–
79 that Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, the Finnish-Swedish scientist and explorer,
sailed through it.
The Northwest Passage, on the other hand, also had its strong supporters. In
1576 Humphrey Gilbert, the English soldier and navigator, argued that “Mangia
[South China], Quinzay [Hangzhou] and the Moluccas are nearer to us by the North
West than by the North East,” while John Dee in 1577 set out the view that the
Strait of Anian, separating America from Asia, led southwest “along the backeside
of Newfoundland.” In 1534 Jacques Cartier, the French navigator, explored the St.
Lawrence estuary. In 1576 the English explorer Sir Martin Frobisher found the bay
named after him. Between 1585 and 1587, the English navigator John
Davis explored Cumberland Sound and the western shore of Greenland to 73° N;
although he met “a mighty block of ice,” he reported that “the passage is most
probable and the execution easy.” In 1610 Henry Hudson sailed through Hudson
Strait to Hudson Bay, confident, before he was set adrift by a mutinous crew, that
success was at hand. Between 1612 and 1615, three English voyagers—Robert
Bylot, Sir Thomas Button, and William Baffin—thoroughly explored the bay,
returning convinced that there was no strait out of it leading westward. As in the
quest for a Northeast Passage, interest turned from the search for a route leading to
the riches of the East to the exploitation of local resources. Englishmen of
the Hudson’s Bay Company, founded in 1670 to trade in furs, explored the wide
hinterlands of the St. Lawrence estuary and Hudson Bay. Further search for the
passage itself did not take place until the 19th century: expeditions led by Sir
William Parry (1819–25) and Sir John Franklin (1819–45), as well as more than 40
expeditions sent out to search for Franklin and his party, failed to find the passage.
It was left to the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen to be the first to sail through
the passage, which he did in 1903–05.
Eastward voyages to the Pacific

By the end of the 16th century, Portugal in the East held only the ports of Goa and
Diu, in India, and Macau, in China. The English dominated the trade of India, and
the Dutch that of the East Indies. It was the Dutch, trading on the fringes of the
known world, who were the explorers. Victualing their ships at the Cape, they soon
learned that, by sailing east for some 3,000 miles (5,000 km) before turning north,
they would encounter favourable winds in setting a course toward the Spice Islands
(now the Moluccas). Before long, reports were received of landfalls made on an
unknown coast; as early as 1618, a Dutch skipper suggested that “this land is a fit
point to be made by ships…in order to get a fixed course for Java.” Thereafter, the
west coast of Australia was gradually charted: it was identified by some as the
coast of the great southern continent shown on Mercator’s map and, by others, as
the continent of Loach or Beach mentioned by Marco Polo, interpreted as lying to
the south of Malacca (Melaka); Polo, however, was probably describing the Malay
Peninsula.
In 1642 a farsighted governor general of the Dutch East India Company, Anthony
van Diemen, sent out the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman for the immediate purpose
of making an exploratory voyage, but with the ultimate aim of developing trade.
Sailing first south then east from Mauritius, Tasman landed on the coast of
Tasmania, after which he coasted round the island to the south and, sailing east,
discovered the South Island of New Zealand; “We trust that this is the mainland
coast of the unknown South land,” he wrote. He sailed north without finding Cook
Strait, and, making a sweeping arc on his voyage back to the Dutch port of Batavia
(now Jakarta, Indonesia), he discovered the Tonga and the Fiji Islands. In 1644, on
a second voyage, he traced the north coast of Australia from Cape York (which he
thought to be a part of New Guinea) to the North West Cape.
Westward voyages to the Pacific

The earlier European explorers in the Pacific were primarily in search of trade or
booty; the later ones were primarily in search of information. The traders, for the
most part Spaniards, established land portages from harbours on the Caribbean to
harbours on the west coast of Central and South America; from the Pacific coast
ports of the Americas, they then set a course westward to the Philippines. Many of
their ships crossed and recrossed the Pacific without making a landfall; many
islands were found, named, and lost, only to be found again without recognition,
renamed, and perhaps lost yet again. In the days before longitude could be
accurately fixed, such uncertainty was not surprising.

Some voyages—for example, those of Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, the Spanish

explorer, in 1567 and 1568; Mendaña and the Portuguese navigator Pedro
Fernández de Quirós in 1595; Quirós and another Portuguese explorer, Luis de
Torres, in 1606—had, among other motives, the purpose of finding the great
southern continent. Quirós was sure that in Espíritu Santo in the New Hebrides he
had found his goal; he “took possession of the site on which is to be founded the
New Jerusalem.” Torres sailed from there to New Guinea and thence to Manila, in
the Philippines. In doing so, he coasted the south shore of New Guinea, sailing
through Torres Strait, unaware that another continent lay on his left hand.
The English were rivals of the Spaniards in the search for wealth in unknown lands
in the Pacific. Two English seamen, Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish,
circumnavigated the world from west to east in 1577 to 1580 and 1586 to 1588,
respectively. One of Drake’s avowed objects was the search for Terra Australis.
Once he was through Magellan’s straits, however, strong winds made him turn
north—perhaps not reluctantly. He then sailed along the coast of Peru, surprising
and plundering Spanish ships laden with gold, silver, precious stones, and pearls.
His fortune made, Drake continued northward perhaps in search of the Northwest
Passage. He explored the west coast of North America to 48° N. He returned south
to winter in New Albion (California); the next summer he sailed on the Spanish
route to Manila, then returned home by the Cape.
Despite the fact that he participated in several buccaneering voyages, the English
seaman William Dampier, who was active in the late 17th and early 18th centuries,
may be regarded as the first to travel mainly to satisfy scientific curiosity. He
wrote: “I was well satisfied enough knowing that, the further we went, the more
knowledge and experience I should get, which was the main thing I regarded.” His
book A New Voyage Round the World, published in 1697, further popularized the
idea of a great southern continent.
In the late 18th century, the final phase of Pacific exploration occurred. The French
sent the explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to the Pacific in 1768. He appears
to have been more of a skeptic than many of his contemporaries, for, while he
agreed “that it is difficult to conceive such a number of low islands and almost
drowned lands without a continent near them,” at the same time he maintained that
“if any considerable land existed hereabouts we could not fail meeting with it.” The
British, for their part, commissioned John Byron in 1764 and Samuel Wallis and
Phillip Carteret in 1766 “to discover unknown lands and to explore the coast of
New Albion.” For all the navigational skill and personal endurance shown by
captains and crews, the rewards of these voyages in increasing geographical
knowledge were not great. The courses sailed were in the familiar waters of the
southern tropics; none was through the dangerous waters of higher latitudes.
Capt. James Cook, the English navigator, in three magnificent voyages at long last
succeeded in demolishing the fables about Pacific geography. He was given
command of an expedition to observe the transit of the planet Venus at Tahiti on
June 3, 1769; with the observation completed, he carried out his instructions to
search the area between 40° and 35° S “until you discover it [Terra Australis] or
fall in with the eastern side of the land discovered by Tasman and now called New
Zealand.” He reached New Zealand, circumnavigated both islands, sailed
westward, and on April 19, 1770, made landfall on the eastern coast of Australia.
He then turned northward, charting carefully, being well aware of the dangers of
the Great Barrier Reef. At Cape York, Cook took possession of the whole eastern
coast, to which he gave the name New South Wales. He sailed through Torres
Strait, recognizing as he did so that New Guinea was an island. When Cook sailed
back to England by Batavia and the Cape, the coastline of the fifth continent was
almost complete; only in the south did it still remain unknown. In 1798 to 1799,
two British navigators, George Bass and Matthew Flinders,
circumnavigated Tasmania, and in 1801–03 Flinders charted the coast of the Great
Australian Bight and circumnavigated the continent, thereby proving that there was
no strait from the bight to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
In a second voyage, from 1772 to 1775, which in many ways was the greatest of the
three, Cook searched systematically for the elusive continent that many still
believed might exist. The first summer he examined the area to the south of the
Indian Ocean; in the second, he searched the ocean between New Zealand and Cape
Horn; and, in the third, the ocean between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
He sailed home convinced that the great South Pacific continent of the map makers
was a fable.
With the exploration of the Pacific completed, interest in a Northwest Passage
revived. In 1778 Cook proceeded to latitude 65° N, but he found no way through
the ice barrier either to east or to west. He then sailed south to Hawaii, where he
was killed in a dispute with the islanders.

Terra Australis Incognita had disappeared: there was now no unknown landmass in
the southern oceans. It was Matthew Flinders who suggested that the fifth continent
should be named Australia—a name that had long associations with the South Seas
and that accorded well with the names of the other continents.

The continental interiors

At the opening of the 19th century, the major features of Europe, Asia, and North
and South America were known; in Africa some classic misconceptions still
persisted; inland Australia was still almost blank; and Antarctica was not on the
map at all.
Africa
The river systems were the key to African geography. The existence of a great river
in the interior of West Africa was known to the Greeks, but in which direction it
flowed and whether it found an outlet in the Sénégal, the Gambia, the Congo, or
even the Nile were in dispute. A young Scottish surgeon, Mungo Park, was asked
to explore it by the African Association of London. In 1796 Park, who had traveled
inland from the Gambia, saw “the long sought for majestic Niger flowing
slowly eastwards.” On a second expedition, attempting to follow its course to the
mouth, he was drowned near Bussa, in what is now Nigeria. In 1830 an English
explorer, Richard Lander, traveled from the Bight of Benin, on the West African
coast, to Bussa, and he then navigated the river down to its mouth, which was
revealed as being one of the delta distributaries that, because of the trade in palm
oil, were known to traders as “the oil rivers” on the Gulf of Guinea.
The Zambezi, in south-central Africa, was not known at all until, in the mid-19th
century, the Scottish missionary-explorer David Livingstone crossed the Kalahari
from the south, found Lake Ngami, and, hearing of populous areas farther north,
came upon the river in midcourse. On a great exploratory journey from 1852 to
1856, the main purpose of which was to expose the slave trade, he first traveled
upstream, crossed the watershed between the tributaries of the upper Zambezi and
those of the lower Congo, and reached the west coast at Luanda, Angola. From
there a year’s march brought him back to his starting point near the falls that the
Africans called “smoke does sound” but that Livingstone prosaically renamed the
Victoria Falls; from here he followed the Zambezi downstream, reaching the east
coast at Quelimane, in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). On his second
journey, sent out by the British government to test the navigability of the lower
Zambezi, he explored the Shire (Chire) and Rovuma rivers and reached Lake
Nyasa. His last journey, from 1865 to 1871, was undertaken at the behest of the
president of Britain’s Royal Geographical Society (successor to the African
Association) “to solve a question of intense geographical interest…namely the
watershed or watersheds of southern Africa.” On this journey Livingstone
investigated the complex drainage system between Lake Nyasa and Lake
Tanganyika and explored the headwaters of the Congo. He refused to return to
England with the Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who was sent to his
rescue in 1871, because he was still uncertain of the position of the watershed
between the Nile and the Congo; he wondered if the Lualaba was perhaps a
headstream of the Nile. He struggled back to the maze of waterways around Lake
Bangweulu and died there in 1873.
The whereabouts of the source of the Nile had intrigued men since the days of the
pharaohs. A Scottish explorer, James Bruce, traveling in Ethiopia in 1770, visited
the two fountains in Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, first discovered by the
Spanish priest Paez in 1618. The English explorers Richard Burton and John
Speke discovered Lake Tanganyika in 1857. Speke then traveled north alone and
reached the southern creek of a lake, which he named Victoria Nyanza. Without
exploring farther, he returned to England, sure that he had found the source of the
Nile. He was right—but he had not seen the outlet, and Burton did not believe him.
In 1862 Speke, traveling with the Scottish explorer James Grant, found the Ripon
Falls, in Uganda (which was submerged following the construction of the Owen
Falls Dam [now the Nalubaale Dam] in 1954), and “saw without any doubt that Old
Father Nile rises in Victoria Nyanza.” Stanley completed the puzzle in 1875; he
circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza, crossed to the Lualaba, followed that river to the
Congo, and then followed the Congo to its mouth. The pattern made by the river
systems of Africa was elucidated at last.
Australia
The interior of Australia also posed a problem: was its heart an inland sea or a
desert? This question did not arouse anything approaching the same degree of
public interest that was taken in the geography of Africa. Exploration was slow; the
early settlers on the east coast found that the valleys led to impassable walls at the
valley heads. In 1813 the Australian explorer Gregory Blaxland successfully
crossed the Blue Mountains by following a ridge instead of taking a valley route.
Rivers were found beyond the mountains, but they did not behave as expected.
Another explorer, the Australian John Oxley, in 1818 observed: “On every hill a
spring, in every valley a rivulet, but the river itself disappears.” He guessed that the
great fan of rivers that drained the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range of
eastern Australia fell into an inland sea. The Australian Charles Sturt resolved the
problem by an imaginative journey made in 1829–30. He embarked on
the Murrumbidgee River and was “hurried into a great and noble river
[the Murray].” A week later he encountered another big river flowing into the
Murray from the north, that he rightly concluded was the Darling, the middle
course of which he had explored the year before. The voyage ended when he
discovered that the Murray drained into Encounter Bay on the south coast. The
heart of Australia was not an inland sea but a vast desert. Many more expeditions
were needed to map the continent’s major features, but two revealed its great
extent. In 1840–41 the Australian Edward John Eyre traveled along the south coast
from Adelaide to Albany, a distance of more than 1,300 miles (2,100 km); the
Australians Robert Burke and William John Wills traveled from Melbourne in the
southeast to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north.
Polar regions

The exploration of the polar regions was the work of the first half of the 20th
century. Scientific curiosity mainly inspired the various enterprises, although
political rivalry also played some part.

In the North Polar regions, the scientific age began with the voyaging of William
Scoresby, an English whaler and scientist, who in 1806 reached 81°21′ N. In 1828
an English explorer, Sir William Parry, traveling over drift ice from Svalbard,
reached 82° N. The Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen in 1893 attempted to reach
the Pole by allowing his ship, the Fram, to be frozen into the ice in the East
Siberian Sea in the hope that a current would carry it over the Pole to east
Greenland. At 84° N 102° E, Nansen with a companion left the ship and traveled by
sled to 86°13′ N: the ship eventually emerged from the pack ice north of Svalbard.
In 1909 an American explorer, Robert Peary, reached the North Pole by journeying
by sled with 50 Eskimos from Ellesmere Island, northwest of Greenland.
Soundings of 9,000 feet (2,700 metres) were made within 5 miles (8 km) of the
Pole; it seemed, therefore, that there could be no continent here. In 1958 the U.S.
submarines Skate and Nautilus traveled across the Arctic Ocean under the ice cap.
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The great southern continent, which Captain Cook demonstrated could not lie in the
South Pacific, lay there neglected for some 50 years. From 1839 to 1843, the
British rear admiral James Ross, in command of the ships Erebus and Terror,
explored the coast of Victoria Land. In 1894 Leonard Christensen, captain of a
Norwegian whaler, landed a party at Cape Adare, the first to set foot on Antarctica.
In the first decade of the 20th century, various explorers, including Britons such as
William Bruce, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, the
German Erich von Drygalski, and the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Charcot, confirmed
the existence of an ice cap of continental dimensions. In 1908–09 Shackleton led a
brilliant expedition, during which he examined the Great Barrier, climbed to 11,000
feet (3,400 metres), and reached 88°23′ S. Scott and his party reached the Pole on
Jan. 17, 1912, only to find that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had
already been there on December 14, 1911; Scott’s party, caught in a blizzard, died
on their return journey. In 1928 Sir Hubert Wilkins, the British explorer and
 aviator, flew over Graham Land, using Deception Island as a base. In 1957 and
1958 the British explorer Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary, the New
Zealand mountaineer, traveled across the continent.
Jean Brown Mitchell
LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

history of Europe
History of Europe, history of European peoples and cultures from prehistoric times to the present.
Europe is a more ambiguous term than most geographic expressions. Its etymology is doubtful, as
is the physical extent of the area it designates. Its western frontiers seem clearly defined by its
coastline, yet the…

history of Europe: Discovery of the New World

In the Iberian Peninsula the impetus of the counteroffensive against the Moors carried the
Portuguese to probe the West African coastline and the Spanish to attempt the expulsion of Islam
from the western Mediterranean. In the last years of the…

India: India and European expansion, c. 1500–1858

 When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut (now Kozhikode) in 1498, he
was restoring a link between Europe and the East that had existed many centuries previously. The
first known…

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Contents
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 Table Of Contents
 Introduction
 Diseases
 Animals
 Plants

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Columbian Exchange
ECOLOGY
 WRITTEN BY: 
 J.R. McNeill
See Article History

Columbian Exchange, the largest part of a more general process

of biological globalization that followed the transoceanic voyaging of the
15th and 16th centuries. Ecological provinces that had been torn apart
by continental drift millions of years ago were suddenly reunited by oceanic
shipping, particularly in the wake of Christopher Columbus’s voyages that
began in 1492. The consequences profoundly shaped world history in the
ensuing centuries, most obviously in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. The
phrase “the Columbian Exchange” is taken from the title of Alfred W.
Crosby’s 1972 book, which divided the exchange into three categories:
diseases, animals, and plants.

Columbus arriving in the New WorldChristopher Columbus arriving in the New World, illustration
in Il costume antico et moderno (“The Ancient and Modern Costume,” (1817–26).Photos.com/Getty
Images

Diseases
Before 1492, Native Americans (Amerindians) hosted none of
the acute infectious diseases that had long bedeviled most of Eurasia and
Africa: measles, smallpox, influenza, mumps, typhus, and whooping cough,
among others. In most places other than isolated villages, these had
become endemic childhood diseases that killed one-fourth to one-half of all
children before age six. Survivors, however, carried partial, and often total,
immunity to most of these infections with the notable exception of influenza.
Falciparum malaria, by far the most severe variant of that plasmodial
infection, and yellow fever also crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the
Americas.

influenza virusA coloured transmission electron micrograph showing influenza viruses (red) at the
outer surface of a host cell.Science Photo Library/SuperStock

In the centuries after 1492, these infections swirled as epidemics among

Native American populations. Physical and psychological stress, including
mass violence, compounded their effect. The impact was most severe in
the Caribbean, where by 1600 Native American populations on most
islands had plummeted by more than 99 percent. Across the Americas,
populations fell by 50 percent to 95 percent by 1650.
The disease component of the Columbian Exchange was decidedly one-
sided. However, it is likely that syphilis evolved in the Americas and spread
elsewhere beginning in the 1490s. More assuredly, Native Americans
hosted a form of tuberculosis, perhaps acquired from Pacific seals and sea
lions. But they had no counterparts to the suite of lethal diseases they
acquired from Eurasians and Africans. The paucity of exportable infections
was a result of the settlement and ecological history of the Americas: The
first Americans arrived about 25,000 to 15,000 years ago.
The domestication of species other than dogs was yet to come. So none of
the human diseases derived from, or shared with, domestic herd animals
such as cattle, camels, and pigs (e.g. smallpox, influenza) yet existed
anywhere in the Americas. Unlike these animals,
the ducks, turkeys, alpacas, llamas, and other species domesticated by
Native Americans seem to have harboured no infections that became
human diseases.
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Animals
The animal component of the Columbian Exchange was slightly less one-
sided. Horses, pigs, cattle, goats, sheep, and several other species adapted
readily to conditions in the Americas. Broad expanses of grassland in both
North and South America suited immigrant herbivores, cattle and horses
especially, which ran wild and reproduced prolifically on the Pampas and
the Great Plains. Pigs too went feral. Sheep prospered only in managed
flocks and became a mainstay of pastoralism in several contexts, such as
among the Navajo in New Mexico.
 Monument Valley Navajo Tribal ParkHorseman herding sheep in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal
Park, part of the Navajo Nation reservation, Arizona-Utah border.© CoolPhotography—
iStock/Getty Images

With the new animals, Native Americans acquired new sources of hides,
wool, and animal protein. Horses and oxen also offered a new source of
traction, making plowing feasible in the Americas for the first time and
improving transportation possibilities through wheeled vehicles, hitherto
unused in the Americas. Donkeys, mules, and horses provided a wider
variety of pack animals. Thus, the introduced animal species had some
important economic consequences in the Americas and made the American
hemisphere more similar to Eurasia and Africa in its economy.
The new animals made the Americas more like Eurasia and Africa in a
second respect. With goats and pigs leading the way, they chewed and
trampled crops, provoking between herders and farmers conflict of a sort
hitherto unknown in the Americas except perhaps where llamas got loose.
This pattern of conflict created new opportunities for political divisions and
alignments defined by new common interests.

One introduced animal, the horse, rearranged political life even further. The
Native Americans of the North American prairies, often called Plains
Indians, acquired horses from Spanish New Mexico late in the 17th century.
On horseback they could hunt bison (buffalo) more rewardingly, boosting
food supplies until the 1870s, when bison populations dwindled.
Additionally, mastery of the techniques of equestrian warfare utilized
against their neighbours helped to vault groups such as
the Sioux and Comanche to heights of political power previously unattained
by any Amerindians in North America.

Plains Indians hunting bison on horsebackPlains Indians hunting bison (buffalo) on horseback,
illustration by Karl Bodmer in Reise in das innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834 (1839–
41; “Travels in the Interior of North America in the Years 1832 to 1834”).Rare Book and Special
Collections Division/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
(http://lccn.loc.gov/02005383)

Plants
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The Columbian Exchange was more evenhanded when it came to crops.
The Americas’ farmers’ gifts to other continents included staples such
as corn (maize), potatoes, cassava, and sweet potatoes, together with
secondary food crops such
as tomatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squashes, pineapples, and chili
peppers. Tobacco, one of humankind’s most important drugs, is another gift
of the Americas, one that by now has probably killed far more people in
Eurasia and Africa than Eurasian and African diseases killed in the
Americas.
Some of these crops had revolutionary consequences in Africa and
Eurasia. Corn had the biggest impact, altering agriculture in Asia, Europe,
and Africa. It underpinned population growth and famine resistance in parts
of China and Europe, mainly after 1700, because it grew in places
unsuitable for tubers and grains and sometimes gave two or even three
harvests a year. It also served as livestock feed, for pigs in particular.

Corn (maize)Corn (maize).© vrozhko/Fotolia

In Africa about 1550–1850, farmers from Senegal to Southern Africa turned

to corn. Today it is the most important food on the continent as a whole. Its
drought resistance especially recommended it in the many regions of Africa
with unreliable rainfall.
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Corn had political consequences in Africa. After harvest, it spoils more
slowly than the traditional staples of African farms, such
as bananas, sorghums, millets, and yams. Its longer shelf life, especially
once it is ground into meal, favoured the centralization of power because it
enabled rulers to store more food for longer periods of time, give it to loyal
followers, and deny it to all others. Previously, without long-lasting foods,
Africans found it harder to build states and harder still to project military
power over large spaces. In the moist tropical forests of western and west-
central Africa, where humidity worked against food hoarding, new and
larger states emerged on the basis of corn agriculture in the 17th century.
Some of them, including the Asante kingdom centred in modern-
day Ghana, developed supply systems for feeding far-flung armies of
conquest, using cornmeal, which canoes, porters, or soldiers could carry
over great distances. Such logistical capacity helped Asante become an
empire in the 18th century. To the east of Asante, expanding kingdoms
such as Dahomey and Oyo also found corn useful in supplying armies on
campaign.
The durability of corn also contributed to commercialization in Africa.
Merchant parties, traveling by boat or on foot, could expand their scale of
operations with food that stored and traveled well. The advantages of corn
proved especially significant for the slave trade, which burgeoned
dramatically after 1600. Slaves needed food on their long walks across
the Sahara to North Africa or to the Atlantic coast en route to the Americas.
Corn further eased the slave trade’s logistical challenges by making it
feasible to keep legions of slaves fed while they clustered in coastal
barracoons before slavers shipped them across the Atlantic.
Cassava, or manioc, another American food crop introduced to Africa in the
16th century as part of the Columbian Exchange, had impacts that in some
cases reinforced those of corn and in other cases countered them.
Cassava, originally from Brazil, has much that recommended it to African
farmers. Its soil nutrient requirements are modest, and it
withstands drought and insects robustly. Like corn, it yields a flour that
stores and travels well. It helped ambitious rulers project force and build
states in Angola, Kongo, West Africa, and beyond. Farmers can harvest
cassava (unlike corn) at any time after the plant matures. The food lies in
the root, which can last for weeks or months in the soil. This characteristic
of cassava suited farming populations targeted by slave raiders. It enabled
them to vanish into the forest and abandon their crop for a while, returning
when danger had passed. So while corn helped slave traders expand their
business, cassava allowed peasant farmers to escape and survive slavers’
raids.
 cassavaCassava (Manihot esculenta), which is also called manioc, in cultivation in Uganda.M.
Brambilla/DeA Picture Library

The potato, domesticated in the Andes, made little difference in African

history, although it does feature today in agriculture, especially in
the Maghreb and South Africa. Farmers in various parts of East and South
Asia adopted it, which improved agricultural returns in cool and
mountainous districts. But its strongest impact came in northern Europe,
where ecological conditions suited its requirements even at low elevations.
From central Russia across to the British Isles, its adoption between 1700
and 1900 improved nutrition, checked famine, and led to a sustained spurt
of demographic growth.
Potatoes store well in cold climates and contain excellent nutrition. In the
Andes, where potato production and storage began, freeze-dried potatoes
helped fuel the expansion of the Inca empire in the 15th century. A few
centuries later potatoes fed the labouring legions of northern Europe’s
manufacturing cities and thereby indirectly contributed to European
industrial empires. Both Catherine the Great in Russia and Frederick II (the
Great) in Prussia encouraged potato cultivation, hoping it would boost the
number of taxpayers and soldiers in their domains. Like cassava, potatoes
suited populations that might need to flee marauding armies. Potatoes can
be left in the ground for weeks, unlike northern European grains such
as rye and barley, which will spoil if not harvested when ripe. Frequent
warfare in northern Europe prior to 1815 encouraged the adoption of
potatoes.
Over-reliance on potatoes led to some of the worst food crises in the
modern history of Europe. In 1845–52 a potato blight caused by an airborne
fungus swept across northern Europe with especially costly consequences
in Ireland, western Scotland, and the Low Countries. A million starved, and
two million emigrated—mostly Irish.

Great FamineVictims of Ireland's Great Famine (1845–49) immigrating to North America by ship;
wood engraving c. 1890.© Photos.com/Getty Images

Eurasian and African crops had an equally profound influence on the history
of the American hemisphere. Until the mid-19th century, “drug crops” such
as sugar and coffee proved the most important plant introductions to the
Americas. Together with tobacco and cotton, they formed the heart of a
plantation complex that stretched from the Chesapeake to Brazil and
accounted for the vast majority of the Atlantic slave trade.
Introduced staple food crops, such as wheat, rice, rye, and barley, also
prospered in the Americas. Some of these grains—rye, for example—grew
well in climates too cold for corn, so the new crops helped to expand the
spatial footprint of farming in both North and South America. Rice, on the
other hand, fit into the plantation complex: imported from both Asia and
 Africa, it was raised mainly by slave labour in places such
as Suriname and South Carolina until slavery’s abolition. By the late 19th
century these food grains covered a wide swathe of the arable land in the
Americas. Beyond grains, African crops introduced to the Americas
included watermelon, yams, sorghum, millets, coffee, and okra. Eurasian
contributions to American diets included bananas; oranges, lemons, and
other citrus fruits; and grapes.
The Columbian Exchange, and the larger process of
biological globalization of which it is part, has slowed but not ended.
Shipping and air travel continue to redistribute species among the
continents. Kudzu vine arrived in North America from Asia in the late 19th
century and has spread widely in forested regions. The North American
gray squirrel has found a new home in the British Isles. Zebra mussels have
colonized North American waters since the 1980s. However, the
consequences of recent biological exchanges for economic, political, and
health history thus far pale next to those of the 16th through 18th century.
J.R. McNeill
LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

historiography: World history

…world history is the so-called Columbian exchange, through which pathogens from the
Americas entered Europe and those from Europe devastated the indigenous populations
of the Americas. The Native Americans got much the worse of this exchange; the
population of Mexico suffered catastrophic losses, and that of some Caribbean islands
was…

European exploration
 European exploration, exploration of regions of Earth for scientific, commercial, religious,
military, and other purposes by Europeans, beginning about the 4th century bce.…

continental drift
Continental drift, large-scale horizontal movements of continents relative to one another
and to the ocean basins during one or more episodes of geologic time. This concept was
an important precursor to the development of the theory of plate tectonics, which
incorporates it.…

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Columbian Exchange
QUICK FACTS
DATE
 c. 1400 - c. 1600

CONTEXT
 European exploration
 The Columbian Exchange
RELATED TOPICS
 Animal
 Disease
 Plant
 Biological globalization
Contents
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INFOPRINT
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 Table Of Contents
 Introduction
 Primary objectives and accomplishments
 Methodology and instrumentation
  Conclusions about the deep Earth

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Earth exploration
WRITTEN BY: 
 Robert E. Sheriff
 Brian Frederick Windley
See Article History

Earth exploration, the investigation of the surface of the Earth and of its

interior.

 
EarthThe planet Earth.NASA
CozumelSatellite image of Cozumel, Mexico.Robert Simmon/NASA

By the beginning of the 20th century most of the Earth’s surface had been
explored, at least superficially, except for the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
Today the last of the unmarked areas on land maps have been filled in
by radar and photographic mapping from aircraft and satellites. One of the
last areas to be mapped was the Darién peninsula between the Panama
Canal and Colombia. Heavy clouds, steady rain, and dense jungle
vegetation made its exploration difficult, but airborne radar was able to
penetrate the cloud cover to produce reliable, detailed maps of the area. In
recent years data returned by Earth satellites have led to several notable
discoveries, as, for example, drainage patterns in the Sahara, which are
relics of a period when this region was not arid.
 Scoresby SundSatellite image of Scoresby Sund, Greenland.Jacques Descloitres, MODIS
Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Historically, exploration of the Earth’s interior was confined to the near

surface, and this was largely a matter of following downward those
discoveries made at the surface. Most present-day scientific knowledge of
the subject has been obtained through geophysical research conducted
since World War II, and the deep Earth remains a major frontier in the 21st
century.
01:1502:17

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Exploration of space and the ocean depths has been facilitated by the
placement of sensors and related devices in these regions. Only a very
limited portion of the subsurface regions of the Earth, however, can be
studied in this way. Investigators can drill into only the uppermost crust, and
the high cost severely limits the number of holes that can be drilled. The
deepest borehole so far drilled extends only to a depth of about 10
kilometres (6 miles). Because direct exploration is so restricted,
investigators are forced to rely extensively on geophysical measurements
(see below Methodology and instrumentation).
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Primary Objectives And

Accomplishments
Scientific curiosity, the desire to understand better the nature of the Earth,
is a major motive for exploring its surface and subsurface regions.
Another key motive is the prospect of economic profit. Improved standards
of living have increased the demand for water, fuel, and other materials,
creating economic incentives. Pure knowledge has often been a by-product
of profit-motivated exploration; by the same token, substantial economic
benefits have resulted from the quest for scientific knowledge.
Many surface and subsurface exploratory projects are undertaken with the
aim of locating: (1) oil, natural gas, and coal; (2) concentrations of
commercially important minerals (for example, ores of iron, copper, and
uranium) and deposits of building materials (sand, gravel, etc.); (3)
recoverable groundwater; (4) various rock types at different depths for
engineering planning; (5) geothermal reserves for heating and electricity;
and (6) archaeological features.
Concern for safety has prompted extensive searches for possible hazards
before major construction projects are undertaken. Sites for dams, power
plants, nuclear reactors, factories, tunnels, roads, hazardous waste
depositories, and so forth need to be stable and provide assurance that
underlying formations will not shift or slide from the weight of the
construction, move along a fault during an earthquake, or permit the
seepage of water or wastes. Accordingly, prediction and control of
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are major fields of research in the
United States and Japan, countries susceptible to such hazards.
Geophysical surveys furnish a more complete picture than test boreholes
alone, although some boreholes are usually drilled to verify
the geophysical interpretation.
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Methodology And Instrumentation
Geophysical techniques involve measuring reflectivity, magnetism, gravity,
acoustic or elastic waves, radioactivity, heat flow, electricity, and
electromagnetism. Most measurements are made on the surface of the land
or sea, but some are taken from aircraft or satellites, and still others are
made underground in boreholes or mines and at ocean depths.
Geophysical mapping depends on the existence of a difference in physical
properties of adjacent bodies of rock—i.e., between whatever is being
sought and those of the surroundings. Often the difference is provided by
something associated with but other than what is being sought. Examples
include a configuration of sedimentary layers that form a trap for oil
accumulation, a drainage pattern that might affect groundwater flow, or a
dike or host rock where minerals may be concentrated. Different methods
depend on different physical properties. Which particular method is used is
determined by what is being sought. In most cases, however, data from a
combination of methods rather than from simply one method yield a much
clearer picture.
Remote sensing
This comprises measurements of electromagnetic radiation from the
ground, usually of reflected energy in various spectral ranges measured
from aircraft or satellites. Remote sensing encompasses aerial
photography and other kinds of measurements that are generally displayed
in the form of photograph-like images. Its applications involve a broad range
of studies, including cartographic, botanical, geological, and military
investigations.
Remote-sensing techniques involve using combinations of images. Images
from different flight paths can be combined to allow an interpreter to
perceive features in three dimensions, while those in different spectral
bands may identify specific types of rock, soil, vegetation, and other
entities, where species have distinctive reflectance values in different
spectral regions (i.e., tone signatures). Images taken at intervals make it
possible to observe changes that occur over time, such as the seasonal
growth of a crop or changes wrought by a storm or flood. Those taken at
different times of the day or at different sun angles may reveal quite distinct
features; for example, seafloor features in relatively shallow water in a calm
sea can be mapped when the Sun is high. Radar radiation penetrates
clouds and thus permits mapping from above them. Side-looking airborne
radar (SLAR) is sensitive to changes in land slope and surface roughness.
By registering images from adjacent flight paths, synthetic stereo pairs may
give ground elevations.
Thermal infrared energy is detected by an optical-mechanical scanner. The
detector is cooled by a liquid-nitrogen (or liquid-helium) jacket that encloses
it, making the instrument sensitive at long wavelengths and isolating it from
heat radiation from the immediate surroundings. A rotating mirror directs
radiation coming from various directions onto the sensor. An image can be
created by displaying the output in a form synchronized with the direction of
the beam (as with a cathode-ray tube). Infrared radiation permits mapping
surface temperatures to a precision of less than a degree and thus shows
the effects of phenomena that produce temperature variations, such as
groundwater movement.
Landsat images are among the most commonly used. They are produced
with data obtained from a multispectral scanner carried aboard certain U.S.
Landsat satellites orbiting the Earth at an altitude of about 900 kilometres.
Images covering an area of 185 kilometres square are available for every
segment of the Earth’s surface. Scanner measurements are made in four
spectral bands: green and red in the visible portion of the spectrum, and
two infrared bands. The data are usually displayed by arbitrarily assigning
different colours to the bands and then superimposing these to make “false-
colour” images.

Image of a portion of the Magdalena River valley in Colombia, transmitted by Landsat (formerly ERTS)
2 on Jan. 7, 1977. Green, red, and infrared are recorded separately by the satellite and then combined
to make the image. Vegetation appears red, and barren land is green. The Magdalena River and
nearby lakes are blue; white splotches are clouds. The roughly parallel north-south pattern along the
centre right indicates rock outcrops where the rocks have been bent into a folded structure.Courtesy
of the Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Data Center

In geology, Landsat images are used to delineate landforms, rock outcrops

and surface lithology, structural features, hydrothermal areas, and sites of
mineral resources. Changes in vegetation revealed in the images may
distinguish different soil types, subtle elevation differences, subsurface
water distribution, subcropping rocks, and trace element distribution, among
other things. Lineations of features may distinguish folded-rock strata or
fault ruptures even where the primary features are not evident.

Earth exploration
KEY PEOPLE
 George Washington De Long
 Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell
 Helge Marcus Ingstad
RELATED TOPICS
 European exploration
 Submarine
 Earth
 Undersea exploration
 Sonar
 Bathyscaphe
 Diving bell
 Sealab
 Bathysphere
 Mesoscaphe

Magnetic methods

Measurements can be made of the Earth’s total magnetic field or of

components of the field in various directions. The oldest magnetic
prospecting instrument is the magnetic compass, which measures the field
direction. Other instruments include magnetic balances and
fluxgate magnetometers. Most magnetic surveys are made with proton-
precession or optical-pumping magnetometers, which are appreciably more
accurate. The proton magnetometer measures a radio-frequency voltage
induced in a coil by the reorientation (precession) of magnetically polarized
protons in a container of ordinary water. The optical-pumping
magnetometer makes use of the principles of nuclear resonance and
cesium or rubidium vapour. It can detect minute magnetic fluctuations by
measuring the effects of light-induced (optically pumped) transitions
between atomic energy levels that are dependent on magnetic field
strength.
Magnetic surveys are usually made with magnetometers borne by aircraft
flying in parallel lines spaced two to four kilometres apart at an elevation of
about 500 metres (one metre = 3.28 feet) when exploring for petroleum
deposits and in lines 0.5 to one kilometre apart roughly 200 metres above
the ground when searching for mineral concentrations. Ground surveys are
conducted to follow up magnetic anomaly discoveries made from the air.
Such surveys may involve stations spaced only 50 metres apart.
Magnetometers also are towed by research vessels. In some cases, two or
more magnetometers displaced a few metres from each other are used in a
gradiometer arrangement; differences between their readings indicate the
magnetic field gradient. A ground monitor is usually used to measure the
natural fluctuations of the Earth’s field over time so that corrections can be
made. Surveying is generally suspended during periods of large magnetic
fluctuation (magnetic storms).
Magnetic effects result primarily from the magnetization induced in
susceptible rocks by the Earth’s magnetic field. Most sedimentary
rocks have very low susceptibility and thus are nearly transparent to
magnetism. Accordingly, in petroleum exploration magnetics are used
negatively: magnetic anomalies indicate the absence of explorable
sedimentary rocks. Magnetics are used for mapping features in igneous
and metamorphic rocks, possibly faults, dikes, or other features that are
associated with mineral concentrations. Data are usually displayed in the
form of a contour map of the magnetic field, but interpretation is often made
on profiles.
Rocks cannot retain magnetism when the temperature is above the Curie
point (about 500° C for most magnetic materials), and this restricts
magnetic rocks to the upper 40 kilometres of the Earth’s interior. The
source of the geomagnetic field must be deeper than this, and it is now
believed that convection currents of conducting material in the outer core
generate the field. These currents couple to the Earth’s spin, so that the
magnetic field—when averaged over time—is oriented along the planet’s
axis. The currents gradually change with time in a somewhat erratic manner
and their aggregate effect sometimes reverses, which explains the time
changes in the Earth’s field. This is the crux of
the magnetohydrodynamic theory of the geomagnetic field (see also Earth:
Sources of the steady magnetic field).
Gravity methods
The gravity field of the Earth can be measured by timing the free fall of an
object in a vacuum, by measuring the period of a pendulum, or in various
other ways. Today almost all gravity surveying is done with gravimeters.
Such an instrument typically consists of a weight attached to a spring that
stretches or contracts corresponding to an increase or decrease in gravity.
It is designed to measure differences in gravity accelerations rather than
absolute magnitudes. Gravimeters used in geophysical surveys have an
accuracy of about 0.01 milligal (mgal; 1 mgal = 0.001 centimetre per second
per second). That is to say, they are capable of detecting differences in the
Earth’s gravitational field as small as one part in 100,000,000.
Gravity differences occur because of local density differences. Anomalies of
exploration interest are often about 0.2 mgal. Data have to be corrected for
variations due to elevation (one metre is equivalent to about 0.2 mgal),
latitude (100 metres are equivalent to about 0.08 mgal), and other factors.
Gravity surveys on land often involve meter readings every kilometre
 along traverse loops a few kilometres across. It takes only a few minutes to
read a gravimeter, but determining location and elevation accurately
requires much effort. Inertial navigation is sometimes used for determining
elevation and location when helicopters are employed to transport
gravimeters. Marine gravimeters are mounted on inertial platforms when
used on surface vessels. A ship’s speed and direction affect gravimeter
readings and limit survey accuracy. Aircraft undergo too many accelerations
to permit gravity measurements except for regional studies.
In most cases, the density of sedimentary rocks increases with depth
because the increased pressure results in a loss of porosity. Uplifts usually
bring denser rocks nearer the surface and thereby create positive gravity
anomalies. Faults that displace rocks of different densities also can cause
gravity anomalies. Salt domes generally produce negative anomalies
because salt is less dense than the surrounding rocks. Such folds, faults,
and salt domes trap oil, and so the detection of gravity anomalies
associated with them is crucial in petroleum exploration. Moreover, gravity
measurements are occasionally used to evaluate the amount of high-
density mineral present in an ore body. They also provide a means of
locating hidden caverns, old mine workings, and other subterranean
cavities.

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Seismic refraction methods

Seismic methods are based on measurements of the time interval between
initiation of a seismic (elastic) wave and its arrival at detectors. The seismic
wave may be generated by an explosion, a dropped weight, a mechanical
vibrator, a bubble of high-pressure air injected into water, or other sources.
The seismic wave is detected by a Geophone on land or by
a hydrophone in water. An electromagnetic Geophone generates a voltage
when a seismic wave produces relative motion of a wire coil in the field of a
magnet, whereas a ceramic hydrophone generates a voltage when
deformed by passage of a seismic wave. Data are usually recorded on
magnetic tape for subsequent processing and display.