The Geographic Century

Peary, Amundsen, Shackleton, Bingham, Glenn -- these titans of 20th-century exploration and adventure, and their defining moments of greatness, come to life again for National Public Radio listeners in The Geographic Century, a special series of the NPR-National Geographic Society co-production, Radio Expeditions.

The Geographic Century reprises episodes of human daring, achievement and sometimes tragedy, as bold men and women filled in the last blank spaces on the world's maps.

Following the century as it developed in roughly chronological order, the program uses the words of the explorers themselves -- sometimes heard in rare archival audio recordings -- narration and authentic sound effects, to put the listener at their sides at their moments of truth.

Search the archives and listen:

The Urge to Explore
Humans have wandered the Earth since their first appearance on the planet, motivated by hunger, fear and something else: simple curiosity about what lies over the horizon. During the 20th century, bold men and women set out to explore some of the last untouched territories on the planet. Some of them remain famous today; some are barely remembered. This series is their story.

Robert Peary
The century opened with a great international race to the poles -- an outgrowth of 19th- century attempts to find a northwest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. U.S. naval officer Robert Peary, along with his African-American assistant Matthew Henson and five Eskimos, claimed that on April 6, 1909, they were the first humans to stand on the northernmost point of the Earth. The segment features a rare National Geographic Society recording on wax cylinder of Peary.

Roald Amundsen
The race to the South Pole was won in 1912 by Roald Amundsen, a dour Norwegian seaman who thought nothing of eating his sled-dogs in his minutely planned, relentlessly executed march across Antarctica and back. The tragic loser was England's Robert Falcon Scott, who regarded dogs more as companions, and perished on his return trip.

William Sheppard
The opening of the century found American William Sheppard, the son of a former slave, serving as a Presbyterian missionary in Africa. His reports, including eye-opening accounts of King Leopold’s Belgian Congo, provided insights into European excesses on the continent.

Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton was a British seaman who set out to cross Antarctica on foot. He never even reached the continent, but instead wound up rescuing himself and his 27 companions from certain death in one of this century's most harrowing -- and inspiring -- survival adventures.

Hiram Bingham
Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham set out to find the last refuge of the Incas in their 16th-century flight from the Spanish. What he found in 1911 was not the "Vilcabamba" of legend. Nevertheless, the fabulous stone city of Machu Picchu proved to be the most important South American ruin found since the days of the conquest.

Roy Chapman Andrews
When Roy Chapman Andrews died in 1960, few people remembered the name of one of the century's most celebrated explorers. His discoveries verified that mammals existed side-by-side with dinosaurs and that dinosaurs came from eggs.

Richard Byrd
Richard Byrd will always be associated with the beginnings of scientific research on the Antarctic continent. But few know the story of the difficult choice he faced along the way from his camp, "Little America," to the South Pole by air.

Percy Fawcett
British army officer Percy Fawcett began his South America odyssey surveying disputed national boundaries but soon became caught up in jungle legends. In 1925 he set out to find a lost city in the Brazilian rainforest -- and was never seen again. His fate remains a mystery to this day.

Mapping
Most people tend to take maps for granted. But this century has seen a revolution in map-making that has made it possible to drive from one coast to the other following a route laid out by a computer -- and to analyze vital information about our planet, such as the effects of changing climates.

The First Flight
The Wright brothers flew their first airplane in 1903, and one of the things that has never been the same is the business of exploration. This segment recalls the daring and often tragic days of early aviation through the re-creation of a 1919 flight across the British Empire.

Max Mallowan
Sir Max Mallowan was one of the last titans of British archaeology -- and the husband of novelist Agatha Christie. Together they explored the ancient mysteries of the Middle East, one of the greatest of which was the ritual sacrifice of 68 women in the lost Biblical city of Ur.

Howard Carter
In 1922, an Englishman by the name of Howard Carter entered the sealed tomb of the boy-king of Egypt, Pharaoh Tutankhamen. Within months, people connected with the expedition began mysteriously dying. Carter's discovery sparked a long-lived pop-culture phenomenon, and allowed a rich glimpse into an ancient world.

Joseph Rock
He traveled through the backwoods of western China during the 1920s and 1930s in grand style, with silverware and table linen, opera records and a folding rubber bathtub. An eccentric loner, Joseph Rock's word-and-picture portraits of the region opened new worlds for western eyes.

Matthew Stirling
Matthew Stirling, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution, flew bush planes and lived among head-shrinkers in New Guinea. But his most celebrated feat was the discovery of the ancient Olmec culture in southern Mexico -- the oldest civilization in Central America.

Georges-Marie Haardt
In 1931, French automobile maker Andre Citroën wanted to try out his new all-terrain vehicle -- a car equipped with caterpillar tracks. The test turned into an epic journey of discovery across Asia, from the Mediterranean to Beijing, led by Georges-Marie Haardt.

Richard Archbold
Largely unremembered today, Richard Archbold set out on a great adventure to New Guinea in the 1930s, hoping to record the flora and fauna of the island. He ended up discovering the world's last stone-age society.

George Mallory
Seventy-five years after disappearing on his last climb, the great English mountaineer George Mallory's body was finally found on Mount Everest in May 1999. Exactly how he died, and whether he attained his goal of reaching the summit, remain mysteries.

Edmund Hillary
Experts once doubted that humans could survive at an altitude of 29,000 feet. In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa climbing partner Tensing Norgay proved them wrong with their famous ascent to the top of Mount Everest.

Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdahl sailed a balsa raft across the Pacific 50 years ago to prove that South Americans might have journeyed to Polynesia. His theories are questioned by many scholars, but his adventure remains one of the great feats of exploration of all time.

Jacques Cousteau
Frenchman Jacques Cousteau, co-inventor of the aqualung, was a visionary filmmaker and popularizer of the undersea world. Cousteau spent the latter part of his life as an ardent conservationist, urging protection for the undersea realm he opened for so many.

Luis Marden
During the 20th century, remote places in the world were made familiar through the art of the camera. Pioneering photographer Luis Marden not only brought back spectacular images but made an amazing discovery of his own: the wreck of the legendary British ship Bounty.

George Bass
Widely acknowledged as the father of modern nautical archaeology, George Bass applied the techniques of dry-land archaeology to the underwater environment. His methods led to the discovery of the world's oldest shipwreck. It is here, beneath the waves, that he predicts the great discoveries of the 21st century will be made.

Louis & Mary Leakey
In its rich crop of fossils, Olduvai Gorge in East Africa has yielded monumental insights into human ancestry. The paleoanthropologists who first plumbed its depths were Louis and Mary Leakey -- a couple who also changed the way humans think about their origins.

Women Explorers
Why were there so few famous women explorers during the first three-quarters of the 20th century? It turns out there were quite a few women eager to venture into the unknown; but their exploits went largely unnoticed.

Unsung Heroes I
So many of the century's explorers have never been acknowledged: the guides, interpreters and fossil-hunters who often accompanied the famous personages and made their celebrated exploits possible.

Unsung Heroes II
Matthew Henson's status as co-discoverer of the North Pole was long overlooked. Now a U.S. naval research ship has been named for Robert Peary's African-American assistant -- one of many honors that have come his way in recent years.

Dian Fossey
Even before King Kong, gorillas were regarded as unpredictable monsters. Dian Fossey, who as a young woman set out to study them by living by their sides, showed the mountain gorillas of Rwanda to be gentle giants whose worst enemies are humans.

Jane Goodall
A childhood fascination with African wildlife inspired Jane Goodall's career as one of the great field scientists of our time. The quiet Englishwoman has explored the secret lives of chimpanzees in Tanzania and become a passionate champion of the rights of animals. Her advice to children today: Follow your dreams.

Kenan Erim
Aphrodite, the Greek ideal of physical beauty and love, lent her name to a city in ancient Anatolia that the Romans turned into one of their principal provincial capitals. This is the story of the excavation of Aphrodisias, and of the Turkish archaeological professor who fell in love with its namesake.

Kent Weeks
In the mid-1990s, American archaeologist Kent Weeks made an amazing discovery in Egypt's Valley of the Kings: the burial place of the sons of Ramses II -- known in the Book of Exodus simply as "Pharaoh." The find may shed light on the Biblical story.

Reinhold Messner
Mountain climber Reinhold Messner has explored the world at some of the highest altitudes and changed the parameters of what is thought humanly possible.

Naturalists
Some of the most important explorations during the 20th century were carried out by naturalists -- scientists in various fields probing the secrets of the creatures that live in the wilds. Two of them -- botanist Al Gentry and ornithologist Ted Parker -- died tragically while surveying plants and animals in Ecuador.

George Schaller
Before Dian Fossey ever set foot in the misty Virunga Mountains of Rwanda, a man by the name of George Schaller was there pioneering the study of mountain gorillas. Lions and tigers and pandas came later. George Schaller -- still active in his 60s -- is one of the most important wildlife biologists of our time.

Space
Of all the wonders in the last 100 years -- flight, nuclear power, TV and radio -- one event stands out in an especially dramatic way: the day that astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off of his space craft and walked on the moon.

Lighter-than-Air Travel
Called by some the last great aviation prize, a non-stop around-the-world trip in a hot-air balloon was completed in March by British pilot Brian Jones and Swiss physician Bertrand Piccard. Piccard's grandfather, Auguste, not only pioneered the form but made high-altitude flight possible with his invention of the pressurized cabin.

Eugenie Clark
Known as the "shark lady" for her many major discoveries about those feared predators of the sea, famed ichthyologist Eugenie Clark disregarded her parents' advice to learn how to be a secretary. Instead of working for an explorer, she was determined to become one herself.

Sylvia Earle
One of the best known marine explorers in the world today, researcher and risk-taker Sylvia Earle remains on the cutting edge of discovery. The former senior ocean scientist for the U.S. government is a tireless and articulate advocate of deep-sea exploration and marine conservation.

Bob Ballard
Undersea explorer Bob Ballard has pioneered new techniques for probing ocean depths, with stunning results. He has found the wrecks of the Titanic and the Bismarck and discovered new creatures that have radically altered our understanding of life on Earth.

Johan Reinhard
One of the most exciting discoveries of the 20th century occurred on an Andean mountaintop: the 500-year-old frozen remains of an Inca ritual sacrifice. The discoverer, whose findings are putting new light on the mysterious Inca culture, is high-altitude archaeologist Johan Reinhard.

Paul Sereno
University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno is one of the most accomplished field scientists of our day, with extraordinary skill at spotting likely sites for dinosaur fossils. After unveiling a monstrous crocodile-like meat-eater the size of a moving van, in 1999 he added a 60-foot, plant-eater to his list. Both creatures lived in the Sahara desert.

What's Left?
With most of the blank spaces on the map having been filled in during the recently ended century, one might assume there is not much left to discover on Earth. Decisively not true, say most of those we interviewed; but 21st-century exploration will not be the same.

The End of an Era
A final listen to the voices of a remarkable century of exploration and discovery.