PolledHistory: History of Exploration

 Hello!

The poll was a tie, but we already did religion in the Friday bonus, so we're doing exploration.

Knowledge of the world and one's surroundings has always been a subject of curiosity throughout history. Exploration is defined as "the action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it", according to the Oxford dictionary. And throughout history, this process has been practiced many times to learn about somebody or a nation's view of the world surrounding it.

In the ancient era, you might think cities were completely disconnected and un-knowing of far away areas, but some places had impressive knowledge of far away lands. The Greek philosopher Anaximander, who died by about 546 BC, made a world map that covered the Mediterranean sea, the Black Sea, included the  Nile river, and had knowledge of Anatolia and the Levant. Still, the map was relatively inaccurate at least compared to our current knowledge.

The Middle Eastern civilizations had knowledge of North Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Europe. The Carthaginian explorer Hanno the  Navigator, an admiral lead a voyage around the African west coast, finding things new to the North African Phoenicians. It covered thousands of kilometers of shoreline and discovered gorillas and active volcanoes.

The Silk Road was an extensive trade route that spanned from China to Rome which transported exclusive goods. The Parthian Persian Empire had knowledge of Ancient China and vice versa. Rome had knowledge of a good part of North Africa, most of Europe, Persia, and India. 

After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire and the advent of the Medieval era, some knowledge of the world was lost. But in the 13th century, there was a famous merchant, explorer, and writer, Marco Polo. He travelled across Asia from Venice to as far as Southeast Asia.

In around the same time Ibn Batutta, a traveler from Morocco, lived and went from West Africa all the way to China. In the Ming Dynasty, the traveler Zheng He made multiple voyages from China to Southeast Asia, India, and East Africa, under patronage of the Ming emperors.

The Age of Exploration began in 1492 with the famous voyage of Columbus and the second discovery of the New World by the Spaniards. For two centuries, many voyages by many different travelers, usually European, discovered new parts of the Americas, East Asia, the Pacific, etc. 

However, these explorations also brought colonization, disease transmission, and thus lots of death and slavery. Diseases such as smallpox ravaged the Native Americans because they were not immune to it like the Europeans were.

And in the next few centuries, the world wss quite clear and now you can see a full world map easily

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