Hanno the Navigator

Hanno the Navigator was a Carthaginian explorer of the fifth century BCE known for leading a large naval expedition along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, an account of which survives in a Greek translation known as the Periplus of Hanno. According to this text, he sailed with a large fleet carrying tens of thousands of colonists to found new Carthaginian settlements along the Moroccan coast before continuing south along largely unfamiliar coastline, describing encounters with local peoples, volcanic activity and what may have been an early sighting of gorillas. Though many details of the voyage's furthest extent remain debated by historians, it stands as one of the earliest recorded exploratory voyages along the West African coast.