Some European commentators, from early frontier explorers to modern anthropologists, also were influenced by their own homophobic prejudices to distort native attitudes.
Soon after, I got a message from a rooftopper in New York City telling me that the whole scene there was on lockdown after two German artists, Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke, put white flags on the Brooklyn Bridge and that the FBI were dragging urban explorers in for questioning.
There is now nothing left above ground to mark the crossing; urban explorers hoping for a subterranean playground will also be disappointed.
Combined with the development of shipping transportation, the west became intrepid explorers of the world, developed a world-view of racial superiority, which led it to achieve military and economic conquests that resulted in transatlantic slavery and colonialism.
The cruise takes us in the wake of many illustrious explorers and pioneers - we sail down the Magellan straits, the Beagle channel - but also to reminders of just what European arrival meant.
After achieving their goal of reaching explorer Douglas Mawson's huts, our intrepid explorers became stuck in sea ice as they tried to return.
Sir Ian Wood, a government adviser and former oil engineering boss, said 10% of the North Sea workforce could be in danger while Robin Allan, chairman of the independent explorers' association Brindex, told the BBC that the industry was "close to collapse".
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has hit back at ridicule of his claim that Islamic explorers discovered the Americas three centuries before Columbus, accusing his Muslim critics of lacking "self-confidence".
Vadim Makharov and Vitaly Raskalov, the orchestrators of this meta-selfie, are part of a loose network of people who used to be called urban explorers.
Finally, three explorers were arrested earlier this month in Toronto, arguably the most historically relaxed city for rooftopping, and are headed to court to answer multiple charges including breaking and entering, and "mischief".
The most common term to define such persons today is to refer to them as "two-spirit" people, but in the past feminine males were sometimes referred to as "berdache" by early French explorers in North America, who adapted a Persian word "bardaj", meaning an intimate male friend.
