“What is our relationship to nature? Is what we find there for us to conquer, master, and use, or is our prime duty to admire and preserve?” asks Joel L. Swerdlow, an Assistant Editor of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, in this introduction to February’s four millennium features: “Revolutions in Mapping”; “Why Explore?”; “Queen Maud Land”; and “Jacques-Yves Cousteau.”

Map supplement: “Exploration.” Chart the routes of famous explorers on a double-sided world map.

Share your thoughts about exploration in our forum.

Computers and satellites allow today’s mapmakers to chart the heavens, guide a missile, or help a farmer increase crop yield—with data that can be updated instantly. “Generations of compasses, T squares, quadrants, and theodolites appear almost Paleolithic compared with today’s computers, cameras, multispectral scanners, satellites, and the Global Positioning System,” says John Noble Wilford as he traces mapping revolutions from the ancient world to present. Photographs by Bob Sacha.

For more from Wilford, see his online essay, Crime Mapping.

Pathfinders discuss what it means to be an explorer of earth, sea, and space at the dawn of the 21st century. Senior writer Priit J. Vesilind visits four masters of exploration and discovery to find out what drives them in their never-ending search for clues to our origins and to our destiny.

Vesilind explores the sea in our online millennium coverage.

On the edge of Antarctica a six-man team climbs mountains never before scaled. Two members of the team, Jon Krakauer and Gordon Wiltsie, report on this triumph of the human spirit.

Learn about the scouting trip that made this possible and view Wiltsie’s exclusive photographs in our online feature, Scaling the Razor.

Co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung, the captain of the Calypso pioneered a new era of underwater exploration and made us aware of the threat of pollution to the world’s oceans. Luis Marden’s profile of Cousteau details the inspiring life of the world’s best-known aquatic explorer.

See Cousteau through his son’s eyes in an exclusive online essay.

Festive trappings pattern the days of a Tuareg marriage ceremony in Niger. Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher share in the very traditional wedding celebration of a young couple from the seminomadic Kel Nagourou group.

Soon after the U.S.S. Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor in 1898, questions arose: accident or mine? Despite new information the mystery of the blast remains. “Who—or what—caused the explosions that sank the Maine? If it was a mine, the Spanish-American war was launched by a mass murder. If an accident destroyed her, the battle cry of that war—‘Remember the Maine!’—should never have been shouted,” says author Thomas B. Allen. Photographs by Ira Block.

To reach Perth from Darwin, head southwest into the burning wind and pedal, mate—for 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers). American journalist Roff Martin Smith continues to come face-to-face with his adopted country in part two of this three-part essay. Photographs by R. Ian Lloyd.