История географических открытий и исследований.

Act of traveling and searching for resources or for information about the land or space itself

Geographical exploration, sometimes considered the default meaning for the more general term exploration, refers to the practice of discovering remote lands and regions of the planet Earth. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most of Homo sapiens history, saw humans moving out of Africa, settling in new lands, and developing distinct cultures in relative isolation. Early writings about exploration date back to the 4th millennium B. C. in ancient Egypt. One of the earliest and most impactful thinkers of exploration was Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. Between the 5th century and 15th century AD, most exploration was done by Chinese and Arab explorers. This was followed by the Age of Discovery after European scholars rediscovered the works of early Latin and Greek geographers. While the Age of Discovery was partly driven by European land routes becoming unsafe, and a desire for conquest, the 17th century saw exploration driven by nobler motives, including scientific discovery and the expansion of knowledge about the world.

The Phoenicians (1550 BCE–300 BCE) traded throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Asia Minor though many of their routes are still unknown today. The presence of tin in some Phoenician artifacts suggests that they may have traveled to Britain. According to Virgil's Aeneid and other ancient sources, the legendary Queen Dido was a Phoenician from Tyre who sailed to North Africa and founded the city of Carthage.

Hanno the Navigator (500 BC), a Carthaginean navigator who explored the Western Coast of Africa.

Pytheas (4th century BC), a Greek explorer from Massalia (Marseille), was the first to circumnavigate Great Britain, explore Germany, and reach Thule (most commonly thought to be the Shetland Islands or Iceland). Under Augustus, Romans reached and explored all the Baltic Sea.

During the 2nd century BC, the Han dynasty explored much of the Eastern Northern Hemisphere. Starting in 139 BC, the Han diplomat Zhang Qian traveled west in an unsuccessful attempt to secure an alliance with the Da Yuezhi against the Xiongnu (the Yuezhi had been evicted from Gansu by the Xiongnu in 177 BC); however, Zhang's travels discovered entire countries which the Chinese were unaware of, including the remnants of the conquests of Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BC). When Zhang returned to China in 125 BC, he reported on his visits to Dayuan (Fergana), Kangju (Sogdia), and Daxia (Bactria, formerly the Greco Bactrian Kingdom which had just been subjugated by the Da Yuezhi). Zhang described Dayuan and Daxia as agricultural and urban countries like China, and although he did not venture there, described Shendu (the Indus River valley of Northwestern India) and Anxi (Parthian territories) further west.

From about 800 AD to 1040 AD, the Vikings explored Iceland and much of the Western Northern Hemisphere via rivers and oceans. For example, it is known that the Norwegian Viking explorer, Erik the Red (950–1003), sailed to and settled in Greenland after being expelled from Iceland, while his son, the Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson (980–1020), reached Newfoundland and the nearby North American coast, and is believed to be the first European to land in North America.

Polynesians were a maritime people, who populated and explored the central and south Pacific for around 5,000 years, up to about 1280 when they discovered New Zealand. The key invention to their exploration was the outrigger canoe, which provided a swift and stable platform for carrying goods and people. Based on limited evidence, it is thought that the voyage to New Zealand was deliberate. It is unknown if one or more boats went to New Zealand, or the type of boat, or the names of those who migrated. 2011 studies at Wairau Bar in New Zealand show a high probability that one origin was Ruahine Island in the Society Islands. Polynesians may have used the prevailing north easterly trade winds to reach New Zealand in about three weeks. The Cook Islands are in direct line along the migration path and may have been an intermediate stopping point. There are cultural and language similarities between Cook Islanders and New Zealand Māori. Early Māori had different legends of their origins, but the stories were misunderstood and reinterpreted in confused written accounts by early European historians in New Zealand trying to present a coherent pattern of Māori settlement in New Zealand. Mathematical modelling based on DNA genome studies, using state of the art techniques, have shown that a large number of Polynesian migrants (100–200), including women, arrived in New Zealand around the same time, in about 1280. Otago University studies have tried to link distinctive DNA teeth patterns, which show special dietary influence, with places in or nearby the Society Islands.

The Chinese explorer, Wang Dayuan (fl. 1311–1350) made two major trips by ship to the Indian Ocean. During 1328–1333, he sailed along the South China Sea and visited many places in Southeast Asia and reached as far as South Asia, landing in Sri Lanka and India, and he even went to Australia. Then in 1334–1339, he visited North Africa and East Africa. Later, the Chinese admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) made seven voyages to Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia, and Thailand.

Long after the Age of Discovery, other explorers "completed" the world map, such as various Russian explorers, reaching the Siberian Pacific coast and the Bering Strait, at the extreme edge of Asia and Alaska (North America); Vitus Bering (1681–1741) who in the service of the Russian Navy, explored the Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, the North American coast of Alaska, and some other northern areas of the Pacific Ocean; and James Cook, who explored the east coast of Australia, the Hawaiian Islands, and circumnavigated Antarctica. There were still significant explorations which occurred well into the late modern period. This includes the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), an overland expedition dispatched by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and to find an interior aquatic route to the Pacific Ocean, along with other objectives to examine the flora and fauna of the continent. In 1818, the British researcher John Ross was the first to find that the deep sea is inhabited by life when catching jellyfish and worms in about depth with a special device. The United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842) was an expedition sent by President Andrew Jackson, in order to survey the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands. The extreme conditions in the deep sea require elaborate methods and technologies to endure them. In the 20th century, deep sea exploration advanced considerably through a series of technological inventions, ranging from the sonar system, which can detect the presence of solid objects underwater through the use of reflected sound, to manned deep diving submersibles. In 1960, Jacques Piccard and United States Navy Lieutenant Donald Walsh descended in the bathyscaphe Trieste into the deepest part of the world's oceans, the Mariana Trench. In 2018, DSV Limiting Factor, piloted by Victor Vescovo, completed the first mission to the deepest point of the Atlantic Ocean, diving below the ocean surface to the base of the Puerto Rico Trench. With the advent of satellite imagery and aviation, broad scale exploration of the surface of Earth has largely ceased, however the culture of many disconnected tribes still remain undocumented and left to be explored, and the details of more inaccessible ecosystems remains undescribed. Urban exploration is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment.

Space exploration started in the 20th century with the invention of exo atmospheric rockets. This has given humans the opportunity to travel to the Moon, and to send robotic explorers to other planets and far beyond. Both of the Voyager probes have left the Solar System, bearing imprinted gold discs with multiple data types.

The scope of underwater exploration includes the distribution and variety of marine and aquatic life, measurement of the geographical distribution of the chemical and physical properties, including movement of the water, and the geophysical, geological and topographical features of the Earth's crust where it is covered by water.