The Urge to Explore

The compulsion to see what lies beyond that far ridge or that ocean-or this planet-is a defining
part of human identity.

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

1 In the winter of 1769, the British explorer Captain James Cook received an astonishing
gift from a Polynesian priest named Tupaia. It was a map, the first that any European had ever
encountered that showed all the major islands of the South Pacific. Some accounts say Tupaia
sketched the map on paper; others that he described it in words. What’s certain is that this map
instantly gave Cook a far more complete picture of the South Pacific than any other European
possessed. It showed every major island group in an area some 3,000 miles across, from the
Marquesas west to Fiji.

2 Cook had granted Tupaia a place on his ship, Endeavour, in Tahiti. Soon after that, the
Polynesian impressed the crew by navigating to an island unknown to Cook. It was 300 miles
south, but Tupaia never consulted a compass, chart, clock, or sextant. In the weeks that
followed, as he helped guide the Endeavour from one archipelago1 to another, Tupaia amazed
the sailors again and again. On request, at any time—day or night, cloudy or clear—he could
point precisely toward Tahiti.

3 Cook, uniquely among European explorers, understood what Tupaia’s feats2 meant. The
islanders scattered across the south were one people long ago who had explored, settled, and
mapped this vast ocean without any of the navigational tools (except for boats) that Cook found
essential—and they had carried the map solely in their heads ever since.

RESTLESS GENES
4 “No other mammal moves around like we do,” says Svante Pääbo, a director of the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He uses genetics to study
human origins. “There’s a kind of madness to it. Sailing out into the ocean, you have no idea
what’s on the other side. And now we go to Mars. We never stop. Why?”

5 If an urge to explore rises in us innately, perhaps its foundation lies within our genome 3.
In fact, there is a mutation4 that pops up frequently in such discussions: a variant of a gene
called DRD4. DRD4 helps control dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that plays a
major role in reward-motivated behavior. Researchers have repeatedly tied the variant DRD4-
7R—carried by roughly 20 percent of all humans—to increased curiosity and restlessness.
Dozens of human studies have found that 7R makes people more likely to take risks; explore
new places, ideas, foods, or relationships; and generally embrace movement, change, and
adventure.

6 So is 7R the explorer’s gene or adventure gene, as some call it? Yale University
evolutionary and population geneticist Kenneth Kidd thinks that this overstates its role. Kidd
speaks with special authority here, as he was part of the team that discovered the 7R variant 20
years ago. “You just can’t reduce something as complex as exploration to a single gene.” It
would be better, Kidd suggests, to consider how groups of genes might lay a foundation for
such behavior. It is likely that different groups of genes contribute to multiple traits that enable
us to explore. There may be other genes—7R quite possibly among them—which go even
further: They push us to explore. It helps, in short, to think not just of the urge to explore but of
the ability—not just the motivation but the means. Before you can act on the urge, you need
the tools or traits that make exploration possible.

EXPLORING BEYOND
7 Following the call of our restless genes has not ended well for all explorers. Captain Cook
died in a fight with Hawaiians ten years after he received the precious map from Tupaia. His
death, some say, brought to a close what Western historians call the Age of Exploration. Yet it
hardly ended our exploring. We have remained obsessed with filling in the Earth’s maps;
reaching its farthest poles, highest peaks, and deepest trenches; sailing to its every corner and
then flying off the planet entirely. With the NASA rover Curiosity now stirring us all as it
explores Mars, some countries and private companies are preparing to send humans to the red
planet as well. Some visionaries even talk of sending a spacecraft to the nearest star.

8 NASA’s Michael Barratt—a doctor, diver, and jet pilot; a sailor for 40 years; an astronaut
for 12—is among those aching to go to Mars. Barratt consciously sees himself as an explorer like
Cook and Tupaia. “We’re doing what they did,” he says. “It works this way at every point in
human history. A society develops an enabling technology, whether it’s the ability to preserve
and carry food or build a ship or launch a rocket.”

9 Not all of us ache to ride a rocket or sail the infinite sea. Yet, as a species, we’re curious
enough and intrigued enough by the prospect to help pay for the trip and cheer at the voyagers’
return. Yes, we explore to find a better place to live or acquire a larger territory or make a
fortune. But we also explore simply to discover what’s there.

1archipelago: n. a group of islands

2feat: n. an act of skill, strength, or bravery
3genome: n. all of the genes in an organism
4mutation: n. a change in the genetic structure of an organism that makes it different