river began in northwest Africa and published his proof, trac-
ing its course across northern Africa, while admitting that it
ran underground for some distance. Bizarre as this theory
seems, it was still accepted in the 19th century.
Around 60 c.e. Roman offi cers moved up the Nile for
a planned invasion of Ethiopia by the emperor Nero (r.
54–68 c.e.), reaching the marshes in present-day southern
Sudan and hearing reports of the lakes beyond. A traveler
named Diogenes, perhaps a generation later, moved in-
land from the vicinity of Zanzibar and saw or heard about
the high mountains of central Africa, providing the name
Mountains of the Moon, and he was also aware of the lakes
around the source of the Nile. But the actual source itself
remained elusive until the 19th century, and there was no
further exploration of Africa in classical antiquity. Roman
trade items and coins reached the southern parts, but the
Romans seemed unaware of the interior south of a line from
Zanzibar to Cameroon.
To the east the journey of Alexander the Great (356–323
b.c.e.) had brought India, and the routes to it, into Medi-
terranean knowledge, though details such as the size and
shape of the Arabian Peninsula continued to be refi ned in
the Roman period. In the fi rst century c.e. Sri Lanka, known
since the fourth century b.c.e., was examined in detail, and
a Roman trading post was established at Arikamedu on the
east coast of India around 50 c.e. In the following century
the Bay of Bengal was explored by a certain Alexander, who
may have gone as far as the Cambodian coast; by late in the
century a Roman trading post may have existed at Oc-èo in
the Mekong Delta.
China had been known since Greek times as the origin
of silk; the name of the region fi rst appears in Greek accounts
(a s “ Th ina”) of around 50 c.e. Th ere is no evidence that Medi-
terranean peoples actually reached China until around 100
c.e. Th e one defi nitive record of Roman contact with China
is in 166 c.e., when an embassy from the emperor Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus (r. 161–180 c.e.) reached China and was
recorded in Chinese records as a mission from An-Tun. From
that time there were sporadic contacts and frequent trade in
both directions.
Th rough trade routes the Romans were aware of parts of
central Asia east of the Caspian Sea, though little was added
to the knowledge existing since the late fourth century b.c.e.
Routes north from the Black Sea to the Baltic region had also
long been known, but otherwise Siberia lay completely out-
side ancient knowledge. Japan and southeastern Asia were
similarly unknown to the Mediterranean world. Existence of
the Western Hemisphere had long been presumed, largely on
the basis of geographical symmetry, and much fantasy litera-
ture was written about the existence of a western continent.
Th is was an inspiration to the European explorers of the Re-
naissance, but there is no evidence of European contact with
the New World until Viking times, although the mid-Atlan-
tic islands such as the Azores and Madeiras had been known
since their Carthaginian discovery.
THE AMERICAS
BY J. J. GEORGE
At a site in Midland, Texas, the skull of a woman lacking facial
bones was found protruding from sand in a windblown de-
pression. Snail shells found in a layer of earth below her yielded
a carbon 14 date of about 11,000 b.c.e. Artifacts found with
her resembled Folsom-style objects and were dated to about
8000 b.c.e. Folsom, along with Clovis, are two of the earliest
American cultural patterns. Scientists have suggested that the
woman probably died there between 9000 and 10,000 b.c.e. In
central Mexico at a place called Tepexpán the skeleton of a man
was found in late Pleistocene sediment and dated 9000–8000
b.c.e., but the excavation was poorly reported. Chemical tests
nonetheless confi rmed the date. In the 1930s the archaeologist
Junius Bird excavated a few skeletons from a South American
site called Palli Aike in Patagonia. Bird discovered sloth and
horse bones in an overlying deposit and a fi shtail point deposit
in an underlying lava deposit. Carbon 14 dates for these items
ranged between 9000 b.c.e. and 8700 b.c.e. Are these the re-
mains of some of America’s early explorers?
Ultimately, the idea of exploration in the ancient Amer-
icas presents a peculiar conundrum. On the one hand, the
period’s defi ning quality is exploration, when one considers
exploration’s relation to migration. As new peoples arrived
in the Americas and diff used south, eventually reaching the
southern tip of South America, their very existence was a form
of exploration. On the other hand, the idea of exploration in
a more familiar form, such as the maritime expeditions of
Captain James Cook, Ferdinand Magellan, and Christopher
Columbus or the overland exploration of the western United
States by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, in the name
of colonization or science or Manifest Destiny, was virtually
unknown until much later.
Exploration is a defi ning aspect of American migration
and settlement and has its beginnings at Beringia, the name
assigned by geologists for the continuous landmass that once
connected Siberia and Alaska and off ered a broad highway to
the Americas not only to early humans but also to the ani-
mals they hunted. Th e traditional theory says the fi rst North
Americans were big game hunters on foot, following large
animals such as the extinct mammoth. During the last glacial
episode (10,500–11,000 years ago), when much of the earth’s
water was locked up in frozen glaciers and water levels world-
wide were much lower, the landmass was as much as 1,000
miles wide. Th e present geographic proximity of Alaska and
Siberia is itself suggestive of an easily overcome barrier; only
56 miles of water separates the two landmasses. In the winter
the strait oft en freezes and it is possible to walk across the ice.
It is generally agreed that the diff usion of the earliest peoples
crossed into the Americas via this passage.
Once in Alaska, however, the early explorers would have
encountered a nearly impenetrable barrier to southward
progress—the same glacial advances that lowered sea levels
and revealed Beringia also covered Canada and northernexploration: The Americas 445