Includes bibliographical references and index.

Presenting the subject on a truly global scale, historian Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a narrative full of character and story. Embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with depth and breadth.--From publisher description.