Explorers and their journeys
History · Key Stage 1 · The School
What an explorer does
An EXPLORER travels to places they have not been before. Then they bring back an account of what they found. Ibn Battuta travelled across Africa and Asia for nearly thirty years in the 1300s. Zheng He led enormous fleets from China. Later, others crossed oceans. Some reached the poles. Some went into space.
Why it was dangerous
Long journeys were dangerous. There were months without fresh food. There were storms. There was illness. Maps were not accurate, so people got lost. There was no way to send for help. Many expeditions lost people. Understanding the risk is part of understanding why these journeys were remembered at all.
Not empty land
Explorers who arrived somewhere new were almost always arriving somewhere people already lived. Those people had their own names for it. Saying someone discovered a place ignores them. Historians say an explorer REACHED a place. Or that they were the first from their own country to do so. That is both accurate and fairer.
Imagine a historian asking who saw land first on the night of 11 to 12 October 1492. Christopher Columbus kept a log of that voyage. The original log is lost. Only a shorter version survives. A writer called Las Casas made it. His version says a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana saw land first. It also says Columbus saw a light, but could not say it was land. Later, Columbus said that he had been the first to see land. He said that his light counted. So the sources give two answers. People already lived on the island. The Lucayan people called it Guanahani. Columbus wrote that name down. Much of what was written about them then is in his log. So the historian writes carefully. Las Casas's version says a sailor saw land first. Columbus later said it was him. These sources do not give the islanders' side of that night.