I. Adventurers and Explorers in History
What is an adventurer?
An adventurer is a person whose life is made of confrontations with universes, that he penetrates without being naturally familiar with it, by simple taste of the unknown or with other goals, without fearing the risks and remaining ready for any adventure coming up.
It is a person who will discover other cultures, other lifestyles, other customs, just want to discover, without necessarily being invited by someone.
What is an explorer ?
The explorer is a person who seeks to discover distant realities, unknown, little known or little studied. It may be a person taking a trip to explore a land for a specific purpose - the most common sense; or studying a particular field.
The explorer is the one who goes away and makes his civilization discover a new land. It's different for other civilizations that receive it. For the peoples who see it coming, this new one can be mistaken for an envoy of the gods, a conqueror or a magician. For example, for the Amerindians, in other words for the populations already on the American continent, Christopher Columbus was not considered as an explorer.
Some reknown explorers and adventurers
In prehistory
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-Homo Sapiens:
350,000 years ago it is the appearance of Man in Morocco, according to archaeologists. Homo sapiens was nomadic until its settlement around 8000 BC These nomads were constantly moving, especially to have food for animals and they gain more and more space by expanding their tribes over time.
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In Antiquity
- The Vikings (Norwegians, Swedes, Danes):
They lived in the Arctic Circle in the years 800 to 1100. (shortly before the year 1000: establishment of an ephemeral viking colony in Newfoundland)
The Vikings are explorers, traders, looters but also Scandinavian pirates .. They are often called Normans, that is to say etymologically "men of the North".
Unlike other peoples of northern Europe, they remained pagan (they are not Christians). It is probably for this reason that in the texts, the Vikings are often described as savages and thieves, because they did not share the most widespread religion of the time, Catholicism, so they said they were bad people.
They were also great sailors, explorers, merchants and warriors who managed to reach Europe, the Mediterranean, West Asia and even created the first existing colony in Iceland and Greenland.
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- The Romans and the Greeks:
They were big conquerors and have been everywhere in Europe making war to others countries to win more lands.
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In the Middle Ages
- Marco Polo:
He was an Italian merchant, famous for his trip to China. At age 17, Marco Polo leaves with his father and uncle to go to Asia where he works for Kubilai Khan, the Mongol emperor.
Returning to Italy after a 26-year journey, Marco Polo was not the first European to visit the court of the Mongol emperor, but he is the first to describe what is going on , how is China and East Asia.
Modern era
- Christopher Colombus
It is a navigator serving Spanish Catholic kings.
He is not the first to set foot in America. Humans have migrated to America probably from Asia 13,000 to 40,000 years ago. It is also not the first navigator to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, archaeological excavations have established that European peoples such as Vikings or Basque, Norman and Breton fishermen had already had knowledge of this new continent.
On the other hand, Christopher Columbus was the one who, looking for a new route to India and Japan (of which we have only heard so far).
He will make four trips on behalf of the Spanish kings and queens. He even becomes Viceroy of India. The discovery of the Caribbean marks the beginning of the colonization of America by the Europeans.
The territory of the Dominican Republic was reached by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and became the site of the first European colonies in America, Santo Domingo becoming the first Spanish capital in the New World.
Christopher Columbus docked on an island on the American continent (which he named San Salvador, in the Bahamas archipelago) for the first time in the night of October 11 to 12, 1492. He died in 1506, still persuaded to have reached the East Indies, the original purpose of his expedition.
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- Vasco Núñez de Balboa 1513 discovers the Pacific Ocean
Vasco Núñez de Balboa is a Spanish conquistador. He was the first European to discover the Pacific Ocean from his eastern coast (in present-day Panama) in 1513. He founded a permanent city there.
- Ferdinand Magellan 1519 begins the first round the world
Fernand de Magellan is a Portuguese navigator and explorer from the time of the Great Discoveries. He is known to be at the origin of the first circumnavigation of history - completed after three years of travel.
In the fifteenth century, contrary to popular belief, the fact that the Earth was round was an idea known since antiquity but not recognized, officially it was flat. The first known globe, that is to say the oldest preserved, is the one made in 1492.
Magellan was convinced that the Moluccas (Spice Islands) were in the half of the globe that was returning to the Spanish crown. It was this project to reach the Spice Islands by the west, finally supported by the Spanish Crown, which led the fleet he commanded to circumnavigate the world, which was in no way the original project. The event had a considerable impact in Europe. After a little more than a quarter of a century, the project of Christopher Columbus was finally realized.
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- 1960: Jacques Piccard, plunges into a bathyscaphe, the Trieste, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench to the Deep Challenger (the deepest place on the planet)
World Record Diving
The US Navy, which bought the submarine Trieste (bathyscaphe) from Piccard, asked him to explore the Marianas Trench in the Pacific, more precisely in the Challenger Pit. The Americans wanted to make sure that there was no more life on the bottom of the ocean to store radioactive materials.
On January 23, 1960 at 1 pm, the Trieste rests on the bottom, at 11,523 meters. One, then two red shrimps pass by the porthole, lit by a mercury lighthouse, then a flat fish, of unknown species. As a result of this discovery, the idea of ​​using this pit as a nuclear waste dump has been abandoned.
The temperature was so low that both explorers had to warm up with hot water bottles at the end of the dive. They have set a record for diving long considered unbeatable.
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