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The torrid zone was the name given by ancient Greek and Roman geographers to the equatorial area of the Earth, so hot that it was thought to be impenetrable. That notion became a deterrent for European explorers until the 15th century.
The torrid zone was the name given by ancient Greek and Roman geographers to the equatorial area of the Earth, so hot that it was thought to be impenetrable. That notion became a deterrent for European explorers until the 15th century.
Origin
Aristotle
Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
posited that the western half of the temperate zone on the other side of the world from Greece
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
might be habitable and that, because of symmetry, there must be in the Southern Hemisphere a temperate zone corresponding to that in the northern. He thought, however, that the excessive heat in the torrid zone would prevent the exploration.
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called "Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-si ...
referred to:
In 8 AD the poet Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso (; 20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a younger contemporary of Virgil and Horace, with whom he i ...
wrote in his ''Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' (, , ) is a Latin Narrative poetry, narrative poem from 8 Common Era, CE by the Ancient Rome, Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''Masterpiece, magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the world from its Cre ...
''.
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer. He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras) and died AD 45.
His short work (''De situ orbis libri III.'') remained in use nea ...
, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the Earth had two habitable zones, a north and a south one. The second population were known as Antichthones. However, it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the equator (''De orbis situ'' 1.4).
Proved wrong
Many Europeans had assumed thatCape Bojador
Cape Bojador (, Arabic transliteration, trans. ''Rā's Būjādūr''; , ''Bujdur''; Spanish language, Spanish and ; ) is a headland on the west coast of Western Sahara, at 26° 07' 37"N, 14° 29' 57"W (various sources give various locations: this ...
, in Western Sahara
Western Sahara is a territorial dispute, disputed territory in Maghreb, North-western Africa. It has a surface area of . Approximately 30% of the territory () is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 70% is ...
, marked the beginning of the impenetrable torrid zone until 1434, when the Portuguese sailed past the cape and reported that no torrid zone existed.{{cite book , last1=Hansen , first1=Valerie , last2=Curtis , first2=Kenneth R. , title=Voyages in World History, Brief , date=2015 , publisher=Cengage Learning , isbn=9781305537705 , page=335 , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OaGaBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA335 , access-date=28 March 2023
References