world exploration
Surveying distant lands
World exploration is the practice of traveling to discover, survey, or document unfamiliar regions of the earth.
The term evokes the age of European maritime expeditions—Columbus, Magellan, Cook—but applies to any systematic investigation of unknown territories: The era of world exploration opened new trade routes.
Modern usage sometimes extends to undersea and polar regions still being mapped and studied.
- terra incognitaUnexplored or unknown region
- uncharted territoryUnmapped, unexplored area
- zoologyStudy of fauna
- pathRoute for traveling
- mapSpatial representation of terrain
climb · anthropology · Silk Road · trade route · circumnavigation · distant shores · foreign lands · ethnography · cartography · ancient maps · uncharted · Age of Discovery · ecology · colonization · lost civilization · expedition · ship · wayfinding
- explorers in literatureRobinson Crusoe, Captain Nemo, Phileas Fogg, Indiana Jones, Sinbad
- travel writingtravelogue, travelogues, travel memoir, travel memoirs, travel diaries
world explorationstaying home
Not going out
sedentary life · staying put · rootedness · immobility · cloistered life
world explorationinsularity
Narrow detachment from broader views
parochialism · provincialism · isolationism · narrow-mindedness · xenophobia