Hanno the Navigator · 500 BCE · sea

The Periplus of Hanno, a Carthaginian expedition of around 500 BC, surviving in a single Greek translation of an inscription. Sixty ships and thirty thousand colonists down the Atlantic coast of Africa - and the identifications below are the conventional ones, all of them disputed.

1. 1
   Carthage

   Around 500 BC, and sixty ships sent out with thirty thousand colonists to found cities along the Atlantic coast of Africa - the account carved on a tablet in the temple of Baal Hammon and surviving in one Greek copy.

2. 2
   The Pillars

   Through the Strait of Gibraltar, which Carthage controlled and closed to everyone else - and out into an ocean that no Mediterranean power had any reliable knowledge of.

3. 3
   Thymiaterion

   The first colony, on the Moroccan coast near modern Mehdia - and then five more founded in quick succession along the shore, which is what the expedition was actually for.

4. 4
   Cape Soloeis

   A headland with a temple to Poseidon, generally taken for Cape Cantin near Safi - the point at which the coast turns south and the settling stops.

5. 5
   Lixos

   A river where nomads pasture cattle, and where Hanno takes interpreters aboard - identified with the Draa or one of the wadis, and the last place the Periplus describes in ordinary terms.

6. 6
   Cerne

   An island in a bay, made the base for everything further south - probably Herne Island in the Rio de Oro, and the furthest point of settled Carthaginian trade.

7. 7
   The Chretes

   A great river with crocodiles and hippopotami, which is the Senegal and the first sub-Saharan river any Mediterranean writer describes - and beyond it, forest and fires burning along the shore at night.

8. 8
   The Western Horn

   A gulf with an island in it, and at night the sound of pipes and cymbals and drums from the shore, and fires everywhere - so the interpreters advised sailing on, and they did.

9. 9
   The Southern Horn

   The furthest point: another gulf, an island, and hairy people the interpreters called gorillai - three of the women taken and skinned, their hides brought back to Carthage, which is where the account ends.

10. 10
    Carthage

    Home, out of supplies - and a text that has been argued over for two thousand years, with the southernmost point placed anywhere from Senegal to Cameroon depending on who is reading it.