Explorers forged the infrastructure of global history, first by finding the routes of migration that sundered human cultures, then - after millennia of divergence - by finding the routes that linked them up again. Pathfinders tells the epic story of how the route-finders did it: who they were, where they came from, where they went, how they coped with the unknown, how they developed the techniques and technologies they needed, how they paid for it, how they suffered for it, and - perhaps most curious of all - why they bothered. From the earliest migratory wanderings that scattered human societies across the planet to the great voyages of discovery that started linking them up again, and finally to the conquering of the final geographical frontiers in the twentieth century, Fernandez-Armesto reveals the real flesh-and-blood, the vainglory and fantasy that motivated the pathfinders of the world.