We Did Not Cease from Exploration

Voyages of exploration and discovery aren’t unknown among non-Western peoples. We know that the Silk Road led Chinese merchants as far west as Antioch in the later Roman Empire, and Arab travelers made regular visits to the steppes of Russia. Intrepid Polynesians set out in their canoes to cross thousands of miles of the sun-drenched Pacific, and while there is no evidence that African sailors crossed the Atlantic before Columbus, it is not beyond imagination.

Joseph Campbell even informs us that the hero’s journey is a universal cultural archetype, as it tests and transforms the hero. But no other civilization has em­braced and channeled the passion and desire to know what’s on the other side of the horizon as the West has from its earliest beginnings.