Seven people who drew the world

Around the year 1000, a Norse seafarer leaves Greenland for the west, following a story: an Icelander blown off course had glimpsed land beyond the sea. Leif, son of Erik the Red, names what he finds for how it looks: Helluland, land of flat rocks; Markland, land of forests; Vinland, land of wine.

The story survives in two Icelandic sagas written two centuries later. And the proof sits in a Newfoundland meadow: at L'Anse aux Meadows, eight Norse timber-and-turf houses from the 11th century came to light — the earliest European trace in North America.

The settlement did not last, and the road was forgotten. But the route remains: some 3,600 kilometres there and back across the North Atlantic, the first European crossing we know of.

In 1245, Pope Innocent IV makes an unprecedented gesture: he sends the Franciscans John of Plano Carpini and Benedict the Pole with a letter all the way to the Great Khan's court. Carpini is past 60; he leaves Lyon on 16 April, through Germany, Bohemia, Poland, and Kiev.

Beyond Kiev there is only steppe: Batu's camp on the Volga, then thousands of kilometres eastward. On 24 August 1246, the two witness the proclamation of the new Khan, Güyük — Europeans at the enthronement of Asia's master.

They return in 1247 with Güyük's answer: a sealed letter demanding the Pope's submission, not peace. Carpini's report circulated across Europe — the first direct description of Asia ever read here, gathered over 14,700 kilometres of road.

Eight years later, King Louis IX of France tries his luck with the same Mongols: he wants them christened and won as allies against the Saracens. He sends the Franciscan William of Rubruck, a Fleming from near Paris.

Departing Constantinople in 1253, Rubruck crosses the Black Sea and Crimea, passes the Don, presents himself to Sartach and to Batu on the Volga, and reaches the court of Great Khan Möngke in midwinter. At Easter 1254 he enters Karakorum.

He obtains nothing the king asked for. But his report is still a geographical masterpiece of the Middle Ages: it describes China, paper money, and printing — and settles a scholars' dispute by proving the Caspian an inland sea, not a gulf of the Arctic Ocean.

Venice, 1271. Marco is 17 when he leaves for the East with his father and uncle, merchants who had seen Asia once before. At Acre they receive papal letters for the Mongol emperor, then pass through Ayas, Erzurum, and Tabriz to Hormuz — where they decide to go on overland, not by sea.

The road takes four years: Khorasan, a year of sickness and recovery in Badakhshan, Kashgar, Dunhuang, Ganzhou — and, in 1275, the court of Kublai Khan. Then 17 years in China, with missions for the Khan as far as Yunnan and Hangzhou.

Early in 1292 they sail from Zayton for home: escorting a Mongol princess to Hormuz, then crossing Persia towards Venice, reached in 1295. Three years later Marco is a Genoese prisoner, dictating to his cellmate Rustichello of Pisa the book that would be called Il milione.

Padua, April 1318. The Franciscan Odoric of Pordenone sets out for the Asian missions in the footsteps of Carpini and Rubruck — but goes far beyond them: across the Black Sea, through Persia via Tabriz, Soltaniyeh, Yazd, and Persepolis, to Hormuz.

Then the unbelievable part begins: India, carrying martyred friars' bones gathered at Salsette for burial in China; Ceylon; Sumatra; Java; Borneo; Champa — and China itself, where his mission ends.

On the way home he crosses Tibet and enters Lhasa — the first European to do so. In May 1330, at Padua, he dictates his account; he dies eight months later, at Udine. His story would be widely copied by the celebrated “Mandeville”, whose book of borrowings became the late Middle Ages' geography manual.

Niccolò de' Conti is a Venetian merchant settled in Damascus. He learns Arabic, then leaves for the East with a caravan of 600 merchants, through the desert to the Euphrates. In which year? Nobody knows exactly — his narrative's editor says so plainly.

Then Persia, the Malabar Coast, the Indian interior — Vijayanagar included — Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and south China: further than any European before him. Twenty-five years on the road.

The return passes the coasts of Ethiopia, the Red Sea, and the desert to Cairo — where he loses his wife and two children. In 1444 he reaches Venice. Forced on the way to renounce his faith, he begs forgiveness of Pope Eugenius IV — and receives it with a penance: to tell his life to the papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini.

Tver, 1466. The merchant Afanasy Nikitin goes down the Volga for furs with a band of companions. Near Astrakhan, Tatars rob them of everything. Others would have turned back; he heads for Persia, to recoup his losses.

Two years through Persia, then the sea: Hormuz, Muscat, Cambay, Chaul — six weeks on the water to India. He sees Junnar and Bidar and writes down everything he lives through, with rare frankness.

The way home takes him through Erzincan and Trebizond — where he is robbed again — and Kaffa, where he finishes his notes. Home he never reaches: he dies near Smolensk. His companions carry the notes to Moscow; found in 1817 by the historian Karamzin, they become the “Journey Beyond Three Seas”.

Lisbon, August 1487. Three ships under Bartolomeu Dias leave the Tagus on King João II's money with a simple mission: the end of Africa. They provision at Mina, leave the storeship at Lüderitz with nine men, and sail into the unknown.

Driven south by storms, the ships round the cape without seeing it: only at Mossel Bay, in February 1488, does the crew grasp that Africa lies behind. They press on to Rio do Infante — the furthest east — and turn for home.

On the way back they sight the cape and raise the São Filipe pillar on 6 June 1488. In December they enter the Tagus, after 16 months and 17 days, with 350 leagues of unknown coast on the charts. The original log would perish in the fire after the 1755 earthquake; we know the route from chronicles, maps, and the stone padrões.