Polynesian navigation: Did you mean...?

This painting is of Tahitians in a canoe and was done by Henry Byam Martin, a ship captain who visited Tahiti in the mid-1800s CE. Martin was a captain in the British Navy who painted and drew during his travels. This picture was painted...

Rapa Nui, the indigenous name of Easter Island, bears witness to a unique cultural phenomenon. A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and original tradition of monumental sculpture...

Portugal established the first and longest-lasting of Europe’s overseas empires, developing a maritime-commercial network that connected the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans from the 15th century onward. Under rulers such as João I (reign...

Arctic exploration represents one of humanity’s most formidable quests for discovery, driven by scientific curiosity, commercial ambition, and geopolitical competition. From the early voyages of Henry Hudson (1609–1610) to the great naval...

The travels of Edmond Halley (1656–1742) exemplify the expanding reach of scientific inquiry during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, an era shaped by the Scientific Revolution. Operating within the maritime world of the Kingdom of...

A detail of a chart showing lines of magnetic compass variation made in 1702 by the English scientist and cartographer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Halley hoped the chart would aid navigation but the variations in magnetism over time made it...

West Point and the Highlands, colour engraving by Samuel Valentine Hunt, 1869. Depicted here is a view from the heights of the west bank of the Hudson River, looking northward along the valley. The United States Military Academy, also commonly...

Valcamonica, situated in the Lombardy plain of Italy, has one of the world's greatest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs — more than 140,000 symbols and figures carved in the rock over a period of 8,000 years and depicting themes connected...