Strangely, in a small town outside Riga, myself and my girlfriend picked up a book by the Royal Geographical Society.  Titled The Royal Geographical Society Illustrated , it’s a mainly photographic record of some awe inspiring explorations to far flung corners of the world – from Shackelton’s fateful Arctic exploration, to tiger hunters in India, to photographs of the the first Europeans to discover the Holy city, Lhasa, on the Tibetan plane.   While it might be tinged with a kind of colonial philosophy about the ‘discovery’ of distant places and peoples by Europeans (or mainly the British in this case), it is also fantastically illustrates what a culturally and geographically diverse world we have lived in.

But at the same time as laying out  the records of these great ‘discoveries’ of the past 160 years, it also somehow highlights how we have been eating away at the world’s diversity.  Never before have I had such a sense that the world is getting smaller and smaller.  As we pack more and people in, it seems that the last great wildernesses are shrinking, and the ‘unique peoples’ are being amalgamated into the juggernaut of general society.  Many of the tribes and peoples in this book don’t exist any more.

Exploration isn’t the same any more; from watching watching Jeremy Clarkson ( BBC presentor for the car related program topgear) drive to the North Pole in in a  4×4,  to the cue of people waiting in line on an in season day to stand at the top of Everest, there are obvious examples of how things have changed.  Could the golden age of geographical discovery be over?

There are still strands of geographical exploration which stand out as reaching into fresh territory, most obviously perhaps, there is space exploration, and Robert Ballard’s talk on deep sea exploration might demonstrate another example.  There are also always people pushing the limits somehow, climbing mountains by new routes, sailing round the world in faster times etc etc.  But is this anything new, or just more of the same?

My instinct tells me that there will always be great discoveries to be made, stagnation isn’t possible, but when mother nature has had enough, we’ll be gone.

Pictures to follow…