第1段

We are all explorers. Our desire to discover, and then share that new-found knowledge, is part of what makes us human 一 indeed, this has played an important part in our success as a species. Long before the first caveman slumped down beside the fire and grunted news that there were plenty of wildebeest over yonder, our ancestors had learnt the value of sending out scouts to investigate the unknown. This questing nature of ours undoubtedly helped our species spread around the globe, just as it nowadays no doubt helps the last nomadic Penan maintain their existence in the depleted forests of Borneo, and a visitor negotiate the subways of New York.

第2段

Over the years, we’ve come to think of explorers as a peculiar breed – different from the rest of us, different from those of us who are merely ‘well travelled’, even; and perhaps there is a type of person more suited to seeking out the new, a type of caveman more inclined to risk venturing out. That, however, doesn’t take away from the fact that we all have this enquiring instinct, even today; and that in all sorts of professions 一 whether artist, marine biologist or astronomer 一 borders of the unknown are being tested each day.

第3段

Thomas Hardy set some of his novels in Egdon Heath, a fictional area of uncultivated land, and used the landscape to suggest the desires and fears of his characters. He is delving into matters we all recognise because they are common to humanity. This is surely an act of exploration, and into a world as remote as the author chooses. Explorer and travel writer Peter Fleming talks of the moment when the explorer returns to the existence he has left behind with his loved ones. The traveller ‘who has for weeks or months seen himself only as a puny and irrelevant alien crawling laboriously over a country in which he has no roots and no background, suddenly encounters his other self, a relatively solid figure, with a place in the minds of certain people’.

第4段

In this book about the exploration of the earth’s surface, I have confined myself to those whose travels were real and who also aimed at more than personal discovery. But that still left me with another problem: the word ‘explorer’ has become associated with a past era. We think back to a golden age, as if exploration peaked somehow in the 19th century 一 as if the process of discovery is now on the decline, though the truth is that we have named only one and a half million of this planet’s species, and there may be more than 10 million 一 and that’s not including bacteria. We have studied only 5 per cent of the species we know. We have scarcely mapped the ocean floors, and know even less about ourselves; we fully understand the workings of only 10 per cent of our brains.

第5段

Here is how some of today’s ‘explorers’ define the word. Ran Fiennes, dubbed the ‘greatest living explorer’, said, ‘An explorer is someone who has done something that no human has done before – and also done something scientifically useful.’ Chris Bonington, a leading mountaineer, felt exploration was to be found in the act of physically touching the unknown: ‘You have to have gone somewhere new.’ Then Robin Hanbury-Tenison, a campaigner on behalf of remote so-called ‘tribal’ peoples, said, ‘A traveller simply records information about some far-off world, and reports back; but an explorer changes the world.’ Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed Arabia’s Empty Quarter in 1946, and belongs to an era of unmechanised travel now lost to the rest of us, told me, ‘If I’d gone across by camel when I could have gone by car, it would have been a stunt.’ To him, exploration meant bringing back information from a remote place regardless of any great self-discovery.

第6段

Each definition is slightly different – and tends to reflect the field of endeavour of each pioneer. It was the same whoever I asked: the prominent historian would say exploration was a thing of the past, the cutting-edge scientist would say it was of the present. And so on. They each set their own particular criteria; the common factor in their approach being that they all had, unlike many of us who simply enjoy travel or discovering new things, both a very definite objective from the outset and also a desire to record their findings.

第7段

I’d best declare my own bias. As a writer, I’m interested in the exploration of ideas. I’ve done a great many expeditions and each one was unique. I’ve lived for months alone with isolated groups of people all around the world, even two ‘uncontacted tribes’. But none of these things is of the slightest interest to anyone unless, through my books, I’ve found a new slant, explored a new idea. Why? Because the world has moved on. The time has long passed for the great continental voyages – another walk to the poles, another crossing of the Empty Quarter. We know how the land surface of our planet lies; exploration of it is now down to the details 一 the habits of microbes, say, or the grazing behaviour of buffalo. Aside from the deep sea and deep underground, it’s the era of specialists. However, this is to disregard the role the human mind has in conveying remote places; and this is what interests me: how a fresh interpretation, even of a well-travelled route, can give its readers new insights.

我们都是探险。我们渴望探索，并将新发现的知识分享出来，这是构成我们人类的一部分，事实上，这在我们作为一个物种的成功中起到了重要作用。早在第一个穴居人靠在火边，嘟哝着传达有大量牛羚在那边的消息之前，我们的祖先就已经学会了派出侦察兵去探索未知。我们这种探索的本性无疑帮助我们的物种在全球范围内扩散，就像如今毫无疑问地帮助最后的游牧佩南人在婆罗洲枯竭的森林中维持他们的存在，也帮助游客在纽约的地铁中导航。

多年来，我们开始认为探险家是一种特殊的品种-与我们其他人不同，甚至与我们这些仅仅“旅行有道”的人不同；也许有一种人更适合寻找新事物，一种穴居人更倾向于冒险。然而，这并不减弱我们今天都具备这种好奇本能的事实；在各种职业中，无论是艺术家、海洋生物学家还是天文学家，每天都在测试未知的边界。

托马斯·哈代在他的小说中描绘了一个名为艾格顿·希思的虚构未开垦土地，并利用这片景观来暗示他的角色的欲望和恐惧。他深入探索了我们都能认识到的问题，因为它们是人类共同的。这无疑是一种探索行为，进入了一片作者选择的遥远世界。探险家和旅行作家彼得·弗莱明谈到了探险家回到他离开的家人身边的时刻。旅行者“几个星期甚至几个月来只把自己看作一个微不足道的陌生人，在一个没有根和背景的国家吃力地爬行，突然遇到了他的另一个自我，一个相对坚实的形象，在某些人的心目中有一席之地”。

在这本关于地球表面探索的书中，我限制自己只关注那些真正进行旅行并且旨在超越个人发现的人。但这仍然让我面临另一个问题：“探险家”这个词已经与过去的时代联系在一起。我们回想起一个黄金时代，仿佛探险在19世纪达到了巅峰-仿佛发现过程现在正在衰退，尽管事实是我们只命名了地球上150万个物种，可能还有超过1000万个物种，这还不包括细菌。我们只研究了我们所知道的物种的5％。我们几乎没有绘制海洋底部的地图，对我们自己的了解更少；我们只完全了解了我们大脑的10％的运作。

以下是一些今天的“探险家”对这个词的定义。被誉为“最伟大的活着的探险家”的兰·菲恩斯说：“探险家是指做了以前没有人做过的事情-并且还做了一些具有科学用途的事情。”领先登山家克里斯·博宁顿认为，探索是通过实际接触未知之地来实现的：“你必须去过一个新地方。”然后，为所谓的“原始”部落争取权益的罗宾·汉伯里-坦尼森说：“旅行者仅仅记录了有关某个遥远世界的信息，并进行回报；但探险家改变了世界。”1946年穿越阿拉伯空旷地区的威尔弗雷德·西格尔，属于一个已经失去对我们其他人来说的非机械化旅行时代，他告诉我：“如果我当初选择骆驼而不是汽车穿越，那只是一次特技。”对他来说，探险意味着无论是否有伟大的自我发现，都要从遥远的地方带回信息。

每个定义略有不同-并且倾向于反映出每个先驱的努力领域。无论我问谁，情况都是一样的：知名历史学家会说探险是过去的事情，前沿科学家会说它是现在的事情。等等。他们每个人都设定了自己特定的标准；他们的方法中的共同因素是，与我们这些仅仅享受旅行或发现新事物的人不同，他们从一开始就有一个非常明确的目标，并且渴望记录他们的发现。

我最好声明自己的偏见。作为一名作家，我对思想的探索感兴趣。我进行了很多次远征，每次都是独一无二的。我曾经与世界各地的孤立群体生活了数月，甚至与两个“未接触的部落”生活过。但除非通过我的书找到了新的视角，探索了新的思想，否则这些事情对任何人都没有丝毫兴趣。为什么？因为世界已经进步了。伟大的大陆航行的时代早已过去-再次到达极地，再次穿越空旷地区已经没有意义。我们知道地球表面的情况；现在探索只是关于细节-比如微生物的习性，或者水牛的觅食行为。除了深海和地下深处，这是专家的时代。然而，这忽视了人类思维在传达遥远地方方面的作用；而这正是我感兴趣的：如何对已经走过的路进行新的解读，给读者带来新见解。