Beyond the myth of exploration lies a rich and overlooked history

The history of exploration is often told in the binary. Explorer and high mountain. Explorer and remote island. Explorer and uncontacted tribe. The conqueror and the conquered. Today the definition of exploration is more expansive. We explore our bodies, our ancestry, the capacity of our brains, the idea of home. We explore history and who gets to tell it. The explorer has been an adventurer, a showman, a scientist, and now there’s a new archetype: the reconciler—someone to help us understand how we got here. These pioneers are interrogating our history books, rewriting them, and hoping to prevent the past from repeating.