Exploring the globe
MoDERN CIVILIZATION HAS ITS ROOTS in the region around the Easter Mediterranean Sea. Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, the world was thought to be a circular disc, with the Mediterranean mor at its centre, surrounded by the land of Europe and what we now know to be the northern parts of Africa, India, and Asia, all in turn surrounded by an ultimate world ocean. About the year AD 1000, Norse voyager had reached North America, but thought it was just another small island, not realizing its extent. Explorers gradually pushed back the frontiers of geographical knowledge, round the coastlines of Africa and India, and northward to Britain, and beyond. Greek philosophers were the first to suggest that the Earth is round, and by the time of Christopher Columbus this was well understood by educated The surprise discovery of Columbus s 1492 was not that the world is round, but that there is another continent in the sea between Europe and Asia. Columbus never knew that he had failed to reach Asia