43 L5-Exploring our world

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Oxford Read and Discover level 5 Exploring Our World by Jacqueline Martin

Introduction Explorers are people who leave their home to discover new places, or to learn new things about people, plants, or animals. To learn more about our world, they go on exciting journeys through forests, across hot or icy deserts, up mountains, or down rivers. Do you know about any famous explorers? Do you know what places they explored, and why? Where are these places? Discover! Now read and discover more about explorers and exploring our world!

Chapter 1 Exploring Thousands of years ago, early people knew about only a very small part of the world. Today we know a lot more, and some of our information comes from explorers. Explorers have changed the world! Why Do People Explore? Early people traveled around to find food and water. Most explorers travel because they are curious and want to discover new places and to learn new things. Some early explorers hoped to get rich by discovering new plants, animals, or treasures, and by selling them when they got home. Today, explorers travel to have an adventure, to learn more about remote places, to find something new to help science, or maybe to be famous. Where Do People Explore? Early explorers wanted to find new places or people. They crossed land and explored deserts, forests, rivers, and mountains. Then they started to explore the oceans. Today, many explorers want to be the first to go somewhere a new way. Some try to find a different route, or look for new ways to travel. Others want to be the youngest, the fastest, or the first to do something, for example, climb a mountain. Discover! An Italian explorer called Reinhold Messner was the first person to climb all 14 mountains that are more than 8,000 meters high.

How Do People Explore? Early explorers used only the stars to find their way. Explorers wanted to share what they found, so they wrote about their journeys and made maps. On the maps they drew mountains, rivers, and other things that they had seen, to make it easier for other travelers to follow the same route. About 2,200 years ago, Chinese people invented the compass. A compass always points north, so it tells you which direction you are traveling in. GPS instruments that use satellites help modern explorers to find out where they are. Why Is Exploring Important? Information from some early explorers has helped people to make maps to show what the world is like. The things that they wrote tell us what life was like a long time ago in the places that they visited. Explorers have learned about new plants and animals, discovered new materials, and learned new languages. They have also discovered inventions, and different ways of doing things, for example, new ways of farming. Discover! Modern explorers are still finding new things. Scientists hope that in the future, they will find cures for many diseases in the rainforests and the oceans.

Chapter 2 Early Explorers Early people traveled around to look for food, but they weren't explorers. Explorers go from their home land to discover something about another place, and then they come back and tell people what they found. Early People People have lived in most parts of the world for thousands of years. Scientists think that early people started in Africa and traveled to Asia. By about 40,000 years ago, there were people in almost every part of Africa, Asia, and Europe. By about 15,000 years ago they moved into America. Famous Early Explorers Zhang Qian was an early explorer from China. He explored many other parts of Asia more than 2,100 years ago. Other people followed his route to trade silk from Asia with things from Europe. The route that he took is now called the Silk Road. Marco Polo was an explorer from Venice, now in Italy. In 1271, he traveled from Europe to China. When he returned to Italy 24 years later, he told people about inventions like paper, money, pasta, and ice cream. From about 1325 a Moroccan explorer, Ibn Battuta, explored North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. He traveled 120,000 kilometers.