WI: The greatest explorer pre 1500

WI: The greatest explorer pre 1500

  • Harakhuf- Nubia, Nile River and Red Sea

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Hanno- North and West Africa

    Votes: 2 2.5%
  • Pytheas- the British Isles, Rhine and Elbe rivers.

    Votes: 2 2.5%
  • Zhang Qian- Central Asia

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • Ibn Fadlan- Iraq, Persia, the Volga River, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea

    Votes: 5 6.2%
  • Leif Eriksson- Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland

    Votes: 16 19.8%
  • Fa Xian- China, India, Sri Lanka, Java and Central Asia

    Votes: 1 1.2%
  • William of Rubruck- Lebanon, Crimean peninsula, Central Asia, Mongolia

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Marco Polo- Syria, Iraq, Persia, Central Asia, China, Java, Turkey

    Votes: 12 14.8%
  • Zheng He- Java, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Arabia

    Votes: 8 9.9%
  • Ibn Battuta- Mali, North Africa, Arabia, Iraq, India, Burma and China

    Votes: 34 42.0%

  • Total voters
    81
I wouldn't vote for Ibn Battuta because while being very well travelled, he really did not discover anything. He basically visited all the places that Muslims already knew about and already we're living in. An impressive personal achievement and it makes for an interesting life story, but it didn't really change anything.

Everyone else seems to have actually either discovered something brand new for civilization at the time (the Carthaginian voyages, Leif Erikson), or made the first real contact for their civilization to another one they may have known about it in very theoretical way, but was for all real purposes the first contact of their civilization (Marco Polo, Ibn Fadlan) and expanded their civilization's knowledge base immensely.
 
This is what I love about this forum. I voted for Ibn Battuta, expecting him to be criminally underrepresented. On the contrary, he is killing it. I guess I forgot that people on here know their shit. The guy went everywhere and seemed to genuinely love travelling. Extreme case of wanderlust. I am more jealous of his life than just about anyone's. There are some good options on this poll but IMO he is the obviously choice.

Yeah, the dude was freaking cool.
 
Both Rubruck and Ibn Fadlan would deserve some more love.
As an aside, the group of Andalusian guys known as the Maghrurun are reported to have explored Macaronesia in detail just for exploration's sake. They aren't in the poll, but might deserve mention.
 
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