Pathfinders : a global history of exploration
Presenting the subject on a truly global scale, historian Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a narrative full of character and story. Embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with depth and breadth.--From publisher description
Nonfiction
xvii, 428 pages : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 25 cm
9780393062595, 9780393330915, 0393062597, 0393330915
71312966
Stretching : the first trail finders from gathering cultures to great empires
Reaching : exploring the oceans to about a thousand years ago
Stirring : landward explorations in late antiquity and the Middle Ages
Springing : the maritime turn of the late Middle Ages and the penetration of the Atlantic
Vaulting : the great leap forward of the 1490s
Girdling : connecting global routes, c.1500-c.1620
Connecting : global reconvergence, c.1620-c.1740
Deepening : enhancing the world-picture, c.1740s-c.1840s
Globalizing : the narrowing horizon, c.1850-c.2000