In the depths of the ocean the vast expanse of the sky or the boundlessness of the desert over the course of millenniums daring explorers would embark on journeys time and time again in their quest for discoveries Many of these challenges were only mastered with the help of technical instruments and tools by Carsten Paulun Ship sextant and compass what islands peoples and continents might have gone undis covered until today without technical equipment Presumably quite a few Even though the settle ment of our planet began on foot from Africa about 125 000 years ago the pieces of the Earth s puzzle were put together only thousands of years later with the help of ships Ships made it possible to ex plore the world Thanks to their longships the Vikings traveled far eastward via the Volga River all the way to the Caspian Sea as early as in the 9th century From Iceland via Greenland Leif Eriksson explored the coastal regions of today s Canada and has come to be regarded as the true discoverer of North America some 500 years before Christo pher Columbus To navigate the high seas all sea farers would use the stars and the position of the Sun for orientation Thanks to a technical tool the Vikings including Leif Eriksson were able to reli ably navigate even at dusk and dawn and in fog They used a crystal they called a sunstone First seafarers 62 000 years ago Even much earlier around 60 000 BC the first humans ventured out onto the high seas To settle Australia they must have crossed an ocean with a width of about 100 kilometers 62 miles near today s Makassar Strait That the settlement of Polynesia took place from South America as Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 aimed to demonstrate on his expedition with the legendary Kon Tiki to day is deemed to have been refuted At least though the Polynesians are regarded as the dis coverers of astronavigation It was the ship the sextant and the compass that made the discover ies of the world possible 11 000 meters deep 384 400 kilometers high With their help James Cook the great ex plorer and cartographer of the 18th century on his three voyages around the globe filled nearly all un charted areas on the world s map In 1960 Jacques Piccard in the deep diving submersible Trieste dove nearly 11 000 meters 36 000 feet deep into the ocean and Neil Armstrong in 1969 was the first human to set foot on the Moon By the way the ve hicle that took him there and fortunately back again was a ship as well a spaceship 95 percent of the oceans still unexplored Terra incognita unexplored territory still ex ists Humanity s great urge to explore and discover notwithstanding we hardly know anything about our own planet in spite of the most advanced tech nology Only five percent of the oceans is deemed to have been explored Experts estimate that despite our state of the art tools and equipment we haven t discovered even ten percent of all living organisms yet Large parts of Africa the cradle of humanity the Arctic and the Antarctic have so far only been photo graphed from satellites Even today researchers are still discovering previously unknown areas in South America s jungles and peoples that have never had any contact with the outside world before NEW WORLDS Alpirsbacher Schwarzwaldtrail Length 4 000 meters 13 123 feet Drop 330 vertical meters 1 083 feet Banked turns 43 berms Obstacles 49 jumps Pfad Zwo Length 1 300 meters 4 265 feet Drop 80 vertical meters 262 feet Banked turns 12 berms Obstacles 16 jumps Starting point 905 vertical meters 2 969 feet Starting point 832 vertical meters 2 730 feet TRAILS IN THE SCHAEFFLER MTB ARENA PUSHING THE LIMITS Steep drops sweat inducing climbs long jumps and narrow banked turns mountain biking poses an awe some diversity of challenges Due to disc brakes modern protective gear and suspension forks like those of moto cross bikes humans and hardware are pushed to the limits However not only the bikes have seen huge changes ever since the early days While the fi rst mountain bikers would ride on public hiking trails in the San Francisco Bay Area today s outdoor athletes prefer triggering their adrenaline rushes in bike parks with human made obstacles and jumps One of the most spectacular parks of its kind is the Schaeff ler MTB Arena Sasbachwalden in Germany s South ern Black Forest The challenge here is to precisely adjust your pace at the right moment in order to take maximum speed out of the turns and berms says Merlin Bürkle The 49 year old holds the downhill track record of 7m 59s for the fastest downhill run on the Alpirsbacher Schwarz waldtrail one of the trails in the MTB Arena bikesport sasbachwalden de 58 59 in motion

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