Torrid zone

The Torrid zone was the name given by ancient greek and roman geographers to the equatorial area of the Earth, so hot that was impenetrable. That notion became a deterrent for european explorers until the 15th century.

Modern world map with the intertropical zone highlighted in crimson

Origin

Aristotle posited that the western half of the temperate zone on the other side of the world from Greece 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.[1]

Proved wrong

Many Europeans had assumed that Cape Bojador, in modern Morocco, marked the beginning of the impenetrable torrid zone until 1434, when the Portuguese sailed past the cape and reported that no torrid zone existed.[2]

References
  1. Sanderson, Marie (April 1999). "The Classification of Climates from Pythagoras to Koeppen". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 80 (4): 669–673. JSTOR 26214921.
  2. Hansen, Valerie; Curtis, Kenneth R. (2015). Voyages in World History, Brief. Cengage Learning. p. 335. ISBN 9781305537705. Retrieved 28 March 2023.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.