Rulers of Exploration
12" Wooden Ruler made U.S.A. of American-grown basswood.
Humans have always traveled to unfamiliar places just because they wanted to learn more about them. We are a curious species! This ruler highlights some of the people who did just that and came back having learned a lot.
Our first entry, Scylax of Caryanda (6th century BC) was a Greek sea-captain and Hanno the Navigator (c.500 BC) was Carthaginian. The exact location of the place called “Vinland”, explored by Leif Ericsson (c.970-1020), is unknown, but it was probably the area surrounding the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in what is now eastern Canada.
Genoese Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is known for having explored America, but it was after a different explorer, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), that the continent was named.
Female explorers include Mary Kingsley (1862-1900), who first traveled to West Africa in 1893, and Alexandra David-Néel (1869-1968), who traveled to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners.
The dates listed on this ruler are the years of each explorer’s birth and death, if known. We also list the place that they explored.
The “head” image is of Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809), who, together with his partner William Clark (1770-1838) traveled on foot and by river from St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia River and back from May 1804 to September 1806. Our illustration resembles a portrait made in 1807 or 1808 of Lewis by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), except that we have taken the liberty of adding the coonskin cap.
If you like this ruler, you might also be interested in United States Rulers, Rulers and Patriots, Native American Rulers, Rulers of the Sea or Rulers of the American Railroad.