The End of Exploration, Part I?

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Having been out-of-work, or more specifically under work, for a while, with the plant on forced shutdown, I had all the free time to lay back and watched the nine-disc National Geographic Video Collection on Explorations (2007) for eight consecutive days.

The collection featured everything National Geographic has done for the last 120 years. Founded in 1888, National Geographic can boast that it is in the forefront of various expeditions on explorations, specifically the far reaches of the planet Earth.

National Geographic presented compelling stories about explorations on wildlife, far-away places, never-before-seen sites, even the far recesses of the human mind. I have been an avid explorer, although armchair-bound, I like to read and explore things in my own little way. Some might argue that seeing something on television is not necessarily exploring, but the National Geographic video collection is something of a sight to witness. Here are some of the stories I really liked:

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Past Explorers

Taklamakan is a desert along the Silk Road, where Marco Polo allegedly once roamed. It is also the desert where a Buddhist monk traversed to get to India searching for the original Buddhist sacred texts.

Panama Canal was built to shorten the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Abandoned by the French, who built the Suez Canal, the U.S. deemed Panama Canal an economic, as well as military, necessity. The clip featured on the efforts of two men: a railroad engineer and a medical doctor. Both men shown their passion toward their respective work: The engineer made the Culebra Cut. The doctor, Dr. William Gorgas, found a way to stop the yellow-fever-carrying mosquitoes.

Machu Picchu was one of the grandiest civilization, in its heyday, in Latin America. Situated atop a mountain it rival any modern city in terms of building infrastructure. Machu Picchu, or Old Peak, is a pre-Colombian Inca site located 2,430 metres (8,000 ft) above sea level. On July 24, 1911, Machu Picchu was rediscovered by Hiram Bingham, an American historian lecturer at Yale University, through a local 11-year old Quechua boy named Pablito Alvarez. Bingham undertook archaeological studies and completed a survey of the area. Bingham coined the name “The Lost City of the Incas“, also the title of his first book. Bingham had been searching for the city of Vilcapampa, the last Inca refuge and spot of resistance during the Spanish conquest of Peru. The site received significant publicity after the National Geographic Society devoted their entire April 1913 issue to Machu Picchu.

Volcano show cased the eruption of a super volcano hundreds of years in the past then identified various sites on Earth where characteristically shows the clues to its existence, although erosion and other natural forces have changed the landscape. Tambora stirred in 1812 with small eruptions of ash and steam, accompanied by earthquakes. By 05 April 1815, the first significant eruption took place, Tambora sent an ash plume 15 miles into the air. This first eruption lasted approximately two hours. On the tenth day, 15 April 1815, the final and biggest blast occurred. A year later, 1816, the cloud made its way to the northern hemisphere and caused cooler temperatures and crop failure. That year became known as ‘the year without a summer’.

Angkor Wat One of the first Western visitors to the temple was Antonio da Magdalena, a Portuguese monk who visited in 1586 and said that it “is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of”. The temple was popularized in the West only in the mid-19th century on the publication of Henri Mouhot’s travel notes, describing: “One of these temples—a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo—might take an honourable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged.”

Tutankhamen was an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty (ruled 1333 BC—1324 BC), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. Howard Carter discovered in 1922 Tutankhamen’s intact tomb which received worldwide press coverage and sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamen’s burial mask remains the popular face. From that time, various myths have been offered regarding the curse of Tutankhamen. Another video featured new insights on Tutankhamen find by a team of Egyptian archaeologists, led by Zahi Hawass.

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Notes:

National Geographic (2007). National Geographic: Explore Your Mind – Exploration. National Geographic, Box Set. back to text

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