Explorers and their journeys
History · Key Stage 1 · The School
What an explorer does
An EXPLORER travels to places they have not been before and brings 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, reached the poles and went into space.
Why it was dangerous
Long journeys meant months without fresh food, storms, illness, getting lost with no accurate maps, and 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 arriving somewhere "new" were almost always arriving somewhere people already lived, who had their own names for it. Saying someone "discovered" a place ignores those people. Historians say an explorer REACHED a place, or was the first from their own country to do so, which is both accurate and fairer.
Take any European voyage of exploration. The captain's LOG records distances, weather and supplies. A crew member's letter might record hunger, fear and discipline. And the people already living where the ship arrived have their own account, oral or written, which usually says something very different about what 'discovery' meant. All three are evidence. Using only the first is how a one-sided story gets told.