In the Middle Ages, the slave system was replaced by a more progressive feudal system. But at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the productive forces were underdeveloped, and religion had a significant influence on science. At this time, the materialistic views of ancient scientists were forgotten, the idea of ​​the Earth's sphericity was rejected. Cosmas Indikoples (6th century), author of The Christian Topography of the Universe, claims that the Earth has the form of a tabernacle, that is, it is a quadrilateral, resembling a box, which is surrounded by an ocean. The ocean invades the land by the Roman (Mediterranean Sea), Arabian, Persian, and Caspian Gulfs. Other geographical views of this merchant, and then a monk, are just as absurd. These and similar judgments were closely connected with Christian concepts. They were also reflected on the maps of that time, in the center of which was Jerusalem, to the east of it - paradise, etc. However, religion also had a positive impact on the development of science: chronicles were kept in the monasteries, descriptions were created, books were collected and printed. Main feature feudal period- Isolation, disunity of people.

The main achievements of geography in the period from the 5th to the 15th centuries. reduced to territorial openings. There was no forward movement of theoretical thought, moreover, in many respects, in comparison with the geography of ancient times, a step was taken back. Of the territorial discoveries, we will focus on the travels of the Normans, Arabs, Marco Polo, as well as on the development of the regions of the north by the Russians.

The inhabitants of Scandinavia are called Normans. They lived near the coast and were skilled seafarers, raided England, Holland, France, even reached Constantinople and North America. The northern France they captured was given the name "Normandy" that still exists. The time when the Normans lived is sometimes also referred to as the "Viking Age". According to one interpretation, the word "Viking" means "man from the bay." Indeed, in Scandinavia there are many long winding bays - fjords.

Starting from the 8th century the Normans raided the Orkney, Faroe, Shetland Islands, located near Britain. In 867, Norman Naddot discovered Iceland, however, it received such a name later (Iceland - “Ice Country”), and the colonists founded the village of Reykjavik (now the capital of this country). In 985, the Norman Eric the Red discovered Greenland (“Green Country”), and after a while a colony arose on the south coast. Further voyages of the Normans (Bjarni and Leif the Happy) to the west led to the discovery of North America. This happened between 987-1000. There are no exact indications of which places in North America the Normans visited. Whether they visited Labrador, or Newfoundland, or other places, historians of geography cannot say for sure. With greater certainty they speak of the territory called Vinland by the Normans; apparently, this area is located south of New York. The doubts of historians of geography are explained by the fact that the Normans, giving their names to the territories they discovered, did not indicate their exact geographical position. But the very fact that the Normans discovered North America long before Columbus does not cause controversy.

At first glance, the ease with which the Vikings reached very remote and at that time inaccessible territories is striking, overcoming large spaces North Atlantic. Without detracting from the courage and resourcefulness of the Normans, their art of building strong, well-kept ships, it should still be noted that they would hardly have been able to achieve such success if natural conditions had not contributed to them. X - XII centuries. is the time of the climatic optimum historical period, i.e., the climate then was milder than now, and the ice cover of the seas was less. If not for these natural conditions, the Vikings would hardly have been able to swim in the region of the 65th parallel. Recall that they: called Greenland the “Green Country”, it is known that the colonists were engaged in cattle breeding, that is, there were pastures here. Only later did these areas become covered with ice. in the Icelandic sagas. (tales) ice as obstacles to navigation are not mentioned. Until about 1200, whale and seal hunters sailed to the shores of Svalbard and Novaya Zemlya.

Thus, during the Viking Age, there were fewer multi-year ice, than now. Findings confirm this; on Spitsbergen among the deposits of the glacier of tundra plants belonging to this period. Warmer climate X - XII centuries. had an impact on landscapes and human activities, especially in the northern regions.

Subsequently, the discoveries of the Normans were forgotten, and they did not have a scientific impact. But the Vikings explored new routes, which were later used both for military and commercial purposes, for example, the famous route "from the Varangians to the Greeks."

During the Middle Ages, a prominent role in the geographical; science was played by Arab scientists. Starting from the 7th century the Arabs who lived on the Arabian Peninsula intensively expanded their possessions and created a powerful state (caliphate), the cultural centers of which were Baghdad in the east and Cordoba (in Spain) in the west. Having attached Syria and other countries to their possessions, they got acquainted with the works of ancient scientists, preserved by the bishop of Constantinople; Nester and his followers.

The geographical outlook of the Arabs was broad: they traded with many Mediterranean, eastern (including: China), African countries. Arab travelers wandered the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, India, Middle and Central Asia, Indonesia, etc. The works of Arab geographers and travelers can be found in the works of the famous Soviet orientalist-Arabist, acad. I. Yu. Krachkovsky.

One of the first geographers of this period was Ibn Khordadbeh (c. 820/826-912/913). On the basis of archival data and reports of officials, he compiled the "Book of Ways and States", which contains information about Caliphate of Baghdad, described trade routes to India, Egypt and other countries.

Ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037), who lived most of his life in Bukhara and Gurganj (present-day Urgench) and only at the end moved to Persia, is a prominent scientist and encyclopedist of the Middle Ages. The range of his interests was unusually wide and covered philosophy, natural science, medicine, geology, etc. In the "Book of Healing", along with other issues, he writes about the origin of the animal world, the formation of mountains, plant life, etc. The classification of mineral bodies proposed by the scientist included stones, fusible bodies (metals,) sulfuric (combustible) substances, salts. It was recognized by scientists until the middle of the 18th century.

A great contribution to the development of mathematics, astronomy, botany, geology, ethnography and other sciences was made by the remarkable Central Asian scientist-encyclopedist Biruni (973-1048). He traveled extensively in the Iranian Plateau, Central and Central Asia, and India. Biruni is the author of the well-known work “Kanon Masud”, in which he described the trigonometric method for measuring geographic longitudes, in principle similar to the modern geodetic method, spoke about Nepal, Tibet, and the routes from Fergana to East Turkestan. Among medieval scholars, Biruni was the first to express; the idea of ​​the possibility of rotation of the Earth around the Sun, measured the circumference of the Earth. Interesting considerations of the scientist about changes in the direction of the channel of the Amu Darya in the geological past. He also wrote the "Book of summaries for the knowledge of jewelry", in which he placed information on more than 50 minerals, ores, and metals.

Famous geographer of the XII century. Idrisi (1100 -1161/1165) traveled in North Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Asia Minor. Based on his impressions and on many literary sources, he wrote the essay “Entertainment of the Longing for Traveling Through the Regions”, which contains: information about the Arab countries, as well as about Italy, France, Germany. Idrisi made two maps: round and square. The maps do not have a degree grid, and they are not very accurate. But they testify to the broad outlook of the author: they show Eastern Europe up to the river. Pechory. Idrisi knew the lake. Baikal, r. Amur, Tibet. He divided the earth into seven climates, and each of them into 10 parts.

The best representatives of Arabic science (Biruni, Ibn Sina, Idrisi, etc.) based their works on the sphericity of the Earth, and maps were compiled using the principles of the ancient scientist Ptolemy and his cartographic projections - conical and stereographic. Without introducing anything fundamentally new into the theory of geography, they preserved for posterity the ideas ancient world. Arab scientists made a greater contribution: to regional studies.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe.

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world.

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world.

4 Development of geography in medieval China.

1 Geography in Feudal Europe. From the end of the 2nd century slave society was in deep crisis. The invasion of the Gothic tribes (3rd century) and the strengthening of Christianity, which became from 330 state religion, accelerated the decline of Roman-Greek culture and science. In 395, the division of the Roman Empire into Western and Eastern parts took place. From that time on, the Greek language and literature gradually began to be forgotten in Western Europe. In 410, the Visigoths occupied Rome, and in 476 the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist (26,110,126,220,260,279,363,377).

Trade relations during this period began to decline significantly. The only significant stimulus to the knowledge of distant lands was Christian pilgrimages to "holy places": to Palestine and Jerusalem. According to many historians of geography, this transitional period brought nothing new to the development of geographical concepts (126,279). At best, old knowledge has been preserved, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. In this form, they passed into the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages came a long period decline, when the spatial and scientific horizons of geography narrowed sharply. The extensive geographical knowledge and geographical representations of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians have been largely forgotten. Former knowledge was preserved only among Arab scientists. True, the accumulation of knowledge about the world continued in Christian monasteries, but on the whole the intellectual climate of that time did not favor their new understanding. At the end of the XV century. the era of the great geographical discoveries began, and the horizons of geographical science again began to rapidly move apart. The flow of new information that flooded into Europe had an extremely great impact on all aspects of life and gave rise to that definite course of events that continues to this day (110, p. 25).

Despite the fact that in Christian Europe of the Middle Ages the word "geography" practically disappeared from the ordinary lexicon, the study of geography still continued. Gradually curiosity and inquisitiveness, the desire to find out what distant countries and continents, prompted adventurers to embark on journeys that promised new discoveries. The crusades, carried out under the banner of the struggle for the liberation of the "holy land" from the rule of the Muslims, drew into their orbit masses of people who had left their native places. Returning, they talked about foreign peoples and unusual nature that they have seen. In the XIII century. the paths blazed by missionaries and merchants became so long that they reached China (21).

Geographical representations of the early Middle Ages were formed from biblical dogmas and some conclusions of ancient science, cleared of everything "pagan" (including the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth). According to "Christian Topography" by Kosma Indikopov (6th century), the Earth looks like a flat rectangle washed by the ocean; The sun hides behind the mountain at night; all great rivers originate in paradise and flow under the ocean (361).

Modern geographers unanimously characterize the first centuries of the Christian Middle Ages in Western Europe as a period of stagnation and decline in geography (110,126,216,279). Most of the geographical discoveries of this period were repeated. Countries known to the ancient peoples of the Mediterranean were often re-discovered for the second, third and even fourth time.

In the history of geographical discoveries of the early Middle Ages, the most prominent place belongs to Scandinavian Vikings(Normans), who in the VIII-IX centuries. their raids devastated England, Germany, Flanders and France.

Along the Russian route "from the Varangians to the Greeks," Scandinavian merchants traveled to Byzantium. Around 866 the Normans rediscovered Iceland and established themselves there, and around 983 Eric the Red discovered Greenland, where they also established permanent settlements (21).

In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, the Byzantines had a relatively broad spatial outlook. The religious ties of the Eastern Roman Empire extended to the Balkan Peninsula, later to Kievan Rus and Asia Minor. Religious preachers reached India. They brought their writing into Central Asia and Mongolia, and from there penetrated into western areas China, where they founded their numerous settlements.

Spatial outlook Slavic peoples, according to The Tale of Bygone Years, or the chronicle of Nestor (the second half of the 11th - the beginning of the 12th centuries), extended almost to the whole of Europe - up to about 600N. and to the shores of the Baltic and North Seas, as well as to the Caucasus, India, the Middle East and the northern coast of Africa. In the "Chronicle" the most complete and reliable information is given about the Russian Plain, primarily about the Valdai Upland, from where the main Slavic rivers flow (110,126,279).

2 Geography in the Scandinavian world. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors and brave travelers. The greatest achievement of the Scandinavians Norwegian descent, or the so-called Vikings, was that they managed to cross the North Atlantic and visit America. In 874, the Vikings approached the coast of Iceland and founded a settlement, which then began to develop rapidly and prosper. In 930, the world's first parliament, the Althing, was established here.

Among the inhabitants of the Icelandic colony was someone Eric the Red , which was distinguished by a violent and stormy disposition. In 982, he was expelled from Iceland along with his family and friends. Having heard of the existence of a land lying somewhere far to the west, Eric set sail on rough waters. North Atlantic and after some time was south coast Greenland. Perhaps the name Greenland, which he gave to this new land, was one of the first examples of arbitrary name-creation in world geography - after all, there was nothing green around. However, the colony founded by Eric attracted some Icelanders. Close maritime links developed between Greenland, Iceland and Norway (110,126,279).

Around 1000, the son of Eric the Red, Leif Eirikson , returning from Greenland to Norway, got into a violent storm; the ship is off course. When the sky cleared, he found himself on an unfamiliar coast, stretching north and south as far as he could see. Coming ashore, he found himself in a virgin forest, the tree trunks of which were twined with wild grapes. Returning to Greenland, he described this new land, lying far to the west of his home country (21,110).

In 1003, someone Karlsefni organized an expedition to take another look at this new land. About 160 people sailed with him - men and women, a large supply of food and livestock was taken. There is no doubt that they managed to reach the coast of North America. The large bay they described, with a strong current emanating from it, is probably the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. Somewhere here people landed on the shore and stayed for the winter. The first European child on American soil was born right there. The next summer they all sailed to southbound reaching the peninsula of Southern Scotland. They may have been further south, by the Chesapeake Bay. They liked this new land, but the Indians were too belligerent towards the Vikings. The raids of local tribes caused such damage that the Vikings, who made so much effort to settle here, were eventually forced to go back to Greenland. All stories related to this event are captured in the "Saga of Eric the Red" passed from mouth to mouth. Historians of geographical science are still trying to find out exactly where the people who sailed from Karlsefni landed. It is quite possible that even before the 11th century voyages to the shores of North America were made, but only vague rumors of such voyages reached European geographers (7,21,26,110,126,279,363,377).

3 Geography in the countries of the Arab world. From the 6th century Arabs begin to play a prominent role in the development of world culture. By the beginning of the 8th century they created a huge state that covered the whole of Asia Minor, part of Central Asia, northwestern India, North Africa and most of Iberian Peninsula. Among the Arabs, handicraft and trade prevailed over subsistence farming. Arab merchants traded with China and African countries. In the XII century. the Arabs learned of the existence of Madagascar, and according to some other sources, in 1420 Arab navigators reached the southern tip of Africa (21,110,126).

Many nations have contributed to Arab culture and science. Started in the 8th century decentralization of the Arab Caliphate gradually led to the emergence of a number of major cultural centers of learning in Persia, Spain and North Africa. Scientists of Central Asia also wrote in Arabic. The Arabs adopted a lot from the Indians (including the written account system), the Chinese (knowledge of the magnetic needle, gunpowder, making paper from cotton). Under Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809), a college of translators was established in Baghdad, which translated Indian, Persian, Syriac and Greek scientific works into Arabic.

Of particular importance for the development of Arabic science were the translations of the works of Greek scientists - Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Strabo, Ptolemy, etc. To a large extent, under the influence of Aristotle's ideas, many thinkers of the Muslim world rejected the existence of supernatural forces and called for an experimental study of nature. Among them, first of all, it is necessary to note the outstanding Tajik philosopher and scientist-encyclopedist Ibn Sinu (Avicenna) 980-1037) and Muggamet Ibn Roshd, or Avverroes (1126-1198).

To expand the spatial horizons of the Arabs, the development of trade was of paramount importance. Already in the VIII century. geography in the Arab world was seen as "the science of postal communication" and "the science of paths and regions" (126). Description of travel becomes the most popular form of Arabic literature. From travelers of the VIII century. the most famous merchant Suleiman from Basra, who sailed to China and visited Ceylon, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as well as the island of Socotra.

In the writings of Arab authors, information of a nomenclature and historical-political nature predominates; nature, however, has received unjustifiably little attention. In the interpretation of physical and geographical phenomena, scientists who wrote in Arabic did not contribute anything essentially new and original. The main significance of Arabic literature of geographical content lies in new facts, but not in the theories to which it adhered. The theoretical ideas of the Arabs remained underdeveloped. In most cases, the Arabs simply followed the Greeks without bothering to develop new concepts.

Indeed, the Arabs collected a lot of material in the field of physical geography, but failed to process it into a coherent scientific system (126). In addition, they constantly mixed the creations of their imagination with reality. Nevertheless, the role of the Arabs in the history of science is very significant. Thanks to the Arabs, in Western Europe after the Crusades began to spread new system"Arabic" numbers, their arithmetic, astronomy, as well as Arabic translations of Greek authors, including Aristotle, Plato and Ptolemy.

The works of the Arabs on geography, written in the VIII-XIV centuries, were based on a variety of literary sources. In addition, Arab scholars used not only translations from Greek, but also information received from their own travelers. As a result, the knowledge of the Arabs was much more correct and accurate than that of the Christian authors.

One of the earliest Arab travelers was Ibn Haukal. The last thirty years of his life (943-973) he devoted to traveling to the most remote and remote regions of Africa and Asia. During his visit to the east coast of Africa, at a point about twenty degrees south of the equator, he drew his attention to the fact that here, in these latitudes, which the Greeks considered uninhabited, a large number of people lived. However, the theory of the uninhabitedness of this zone, which was held by the ancient Greeks, was revived again and again, even in the so-called modern times.

Arab scientists own several important observations on the climate. In 921 Al Balkhi summarized information about climatic phenomena collected by Arab travelers in the first climatic atlas of the world - "Kitab al-Ashkal".

Masudi (died 956) penetrated as far south as present-day Mozambique and made a very accurate description of the monsoons. Already in the X century. he correctly described the process of evaporation of moisture from the water surface and its condensation in the form of clouds.

In 985 Makdisi proposed a new subdivision of the Earth into 14 climatic regions. He found that climate changes not only with latitude, but also westward and eastward. It is to him that the idea that most southern hemisphere occupied by the ocean, and the main land masses are concentrated in the northern hemisphere (110).

Some Arab geographers expressed correct ideas about the formation of the forms of the earth's surface. In 1030 Al-Biruni wrote a huge book on the geography of India. In it, in particular, he spoke of rounded stones, which he found in alluvial deposits south of the Himalayas. He explained their origin by the fact that these stones acquired a rounded shape due to the fact that swift mountain rivers rolled them along their course. He also drew attention to the fact that alluvial deposits deposited near the foot of the mountains have a coarser mechanical composition, and that as they move away from the mountains, they are composed of smaller and smaller particles. He also spoke about the fact that, according to the ideas of the Hindus, the tides are caused by the moon. His book also contains interesting statement, that when moving to South Pole the night disappears. This statement proves that even before the 11th century, some Arab navigators penetrated far to the south (110,126).

Avicenna, or Ibn Sina , who had the opportunity to directly observe how mountain streams produce valleys in the mountains of Central Asia, also contributed to deepening knowledge about the development of the earth's surface forms. He owns the idea that the highest peaks are composed of solid rocks especially resistant to erosion. Rising, mountains, he pointed out, immediately begin to undergo this process of grinding, going very slowly, but relentlessly. Avicenna also noted the presence in the rocks that make up the highlands, fossil remains of organisms, which he considered as examples of attempts by nature to create living plants or animals that ended in failure (126).

Ibn Battuta - one of the greatest Arab travelers of all times and peoples. He was born in Tangier in 1304 into a family in which the profession of a judge was hereditary. In 1325, at the age of twenty-one, he went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where he hoped to complete his study of the laws. However, on the way through northern Africa and Egypt, he realized that he was much more attracted by the study of peoples and countries than by the practice of legal intricacies. Having reached Mecca, he decided to dedicate his life to travel, and in his endless wanderings through the lands inhabited by the Arabs, he was most concerned about not going twice in the same way. He managed to visit those places Arabian Peninsula where no one has been before. He sailed the Red Sea, visited Ethiopia and then, moving farther and farther south along the coast of East Africa, he reached Kilwa, lying almost under 100S.l. There he learned about the existence of an Arab trading post in Sofala (Mozambique), located south of the present port city Beira, that is, almost 20 degrees south of the equator. Ibn Battuta confirmed what Ibn Haukal insisted on, namely, that the hot zone of East Africa was not sizzlingly hot and that it was inhabited by local tribes who did not oppose the establishment of trading posts by the Arabs.

Returning to Mecca, he soon sets off again, visits Baghdad, travels around Persia and the lands adjacent to the Black Sea. Following through the Russian steppes, he eventually reached Bukhara and Samarkand, and from there through the mountains of Afghanistan came to India. For several years, Ibn Battuta was in the service of the Sultan of Delhi, which gave him the opportunity to freely travel around the country. The Sultan appointed him as his ambassador to China. However, many years passed before Ibn Battuta arrived there. During this time, he managed to visit the Maldives, Ceylon and Sumatra, and only after that he ended up in China. In 1350 he returned to Fes, the capital of Morocco. However, his travels did not end there. After a trip to Spain, he returned to Africa and, moving through the Sahara, reached the Niger River, where he managed to collect important information about the Negro Islamized tribes living in the area. In 1353 he settled in Fez, where, by order of the Sultan, he dictated a long narrative about his travels. For about thirty years, Ibn Battura covered a distance of about 120 thousand km, which was an absolute record for the XIV century. Unfortunately, his book, written in Arabic, did not have any significant impact on the way of thinking of European scientists (110).

4 Development of geography in medieval China. Beginning around the 2nd century BC. and until the 15th century, the Chinese people had the highest level of knowledge among other peoples of the Earth. Chinese mathematicians began to use zero and created a decimal system, which was much more convenient sexagesimal, which existed in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Decimal reckoning was borrowed from the Hindus by the Arabs around 800, but it is believed that it entered India from China (110).

Chinese philosophers differed from ancient Greek thinkers mainly in that they attached paramount importance to the natural world. According to their teaching, individuals should not be separated from nature, since they are its organic part. The Chinese denied the divine power that prescribes laws and creates the universe for man according to a certain plan. In China, for example, it was not considered that after death life continues in the Garden of Eden or in the circles of hell. The Chinese believed that the dead are absorbed by the all-pervading universe, of which all individuals are an inseparable part (126,158).

Confucianism taught a way of life in which friction between members of society was minimized. However, this doctrine remained relatively indifferent to the development scientific knowledge about the surrounding nature.

The activity of the Chinese in the field of geographical research looks very impressive, although it is characterized more by the achievements of a contemplative plan than by the development scientific theory (110).

In China, geographical research was primarily associated with the creation of methods that made it possible to make accurate measurements and observations with their subsequent use in various useful inventions. Starting from the XIII century. BC, the Chinese conducted systematic observations of the weather.

Already in the II century. BC. Chinese engineers made accurate measurements of the amount of silt carried by rivers. In 2 AD China conducted the world's first population census. Among the technical inventions, China owns the production of paper, printing books, the use of rain gauges and snow gauges to measure precipitation, as well as a compass for the needs of sailors.

The geographical descriptions of Chinese authors can be divided into the following eight groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people (human geography); 2) descriptions of the interior regions of China; 3) descriptions of foreign countries; 4) travel stories; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) descriptions of the coasts of China, especially those that are important for shipping; 7) works of local lore, including descriptions of areas subordinate to and ruled by fortified cities, famous mountain ranges, or certain cities and palaces; 8) geographical encyclopedias (110, p. 96). Much attention was also paid to the origin of geographical names (110).

The earliest evidence of Chinese travel is a book probably written between the 5th and 3rd centuries. BC. She was discovered in the tomb of a man who ruled around 245 BC. territory that occupied part of the Wei He valley. The books found in this burial were written on strips of white silk glued to bamboo cuttings. For better preservation, the book was rewritten in end III in. BC. In world geography, both versions of this book are known as "The Travels of Emperor Mu".

The reign of Emperor Mu fell on 1001-945. BC. Emperor Mu, these works say, desired to travel around the whole world and leave traces of his carriage in every country. The history of his wanderings is full of amazing adventures and embellished with fiction. However, the descriptions of the wanderings contain such details that could hardly be the fruit of fantasy. The emperor visited the forested mountains, saw snow, hunted a lot. On the way back he crossed a vast desert so waterless that he even had to drink the blood of a horse. There can be no doubt that in very ancient times, Chinese travelers traveled considerable distances from the Wei He valley, the center of their cultural development.

Well-known descriptions of travels of the Middle Ages belong to Chinese pilgrims who visited India, as well as the regions adjacent to it (Fa Xian, Xuan Zang, I. Ching, and others). By the 8th century refers to the treatise Jia Danya "Description of nine countries", which is a country guide South- East Asia. In 1221 a Taoist monk Chan Chun (XII-XIII centuries) traveled to Samarkand to the court of Genghis Khan and collected fairly accurate information about the population, climate, and vegetation of Central Asia.

In medieval China, there were numerous official descriptions of the country, which were compiled for each new dynasty. These works contained a variety of miscellaneous information on history, natural conditions, population, economy and various sights. The geographical knowledge of the peoples of South and East Asia had practically no effect on the geographical outlook of Europeans. On the other hand, the geographical representations of medieval Europe remained almost unknown in India and China, except for some information received through Arabic sources (110,126,158,279,283,300).

Late Middle Ages in Europe (XII-XIV centuries). In the XII century. feudal stagnation in the economic development of countries Western Europe was replaced by some rise: craft, trade, commodity-money relations developed, new cities arose. The main economic and cultural centers Europe in the 12th century there were Mediterranean cities through which trade routes to the East passed, as well as Flanders, where various crafts flourished and commodity-money relations developed. In the XIV century. the area of ​​the Baltic and North Seas, where the Hanseatic League of trading cities was formed, also became a sphere of lively trade relations. In the XIV century. paper and gunpowder appear in Europe.

In the XIII century. sailing and rowing ships are gradually being replaced by caravels, the compass is coming into use, the first nautical charts- portolans, methods for determining the latitude of a place are being improved (by observing the height of the Sun above the horizon and using tables of solar declination). All this made it possible to move from coastal navigation to navigation on the high seas.

In the XIII century. Italian merchants began to sail through the Strait of Gibraltar to the mouth of the Rhine. It is known that at that time the trade routes to the East were in the hands of the Italian city-republics of Venice and Genoa. Florence was the largest industrial and banking center. That is why the cities of Northern Italy in the middle of the XIV century. were the center of the Renaissance, the centers of the revival of ancient culture, philosophy, science and art. The ideology of the urban bourgeoisie that was being formed at that time found its expression in the philosophy of humanism (110,126).

Humanism (from the Latin humanus - human, humane) is the recognition of the value of a person as a person, his right to free development and the manifestation of one's abilities, the assertion of the good of a person as a criterion for evaluating public relations. In a narrower sense, humanism is the secular freethinking of the Renaissance, opposed to scholasticism and the spiritual dominance of the church and associated with the study of newly discovered works of classical antiquity (291).

The greatest humanist of the Italian Renaissance and world history in general was Francis of Assis (1182-1226) - an outstanding preacher, author of religious and poetic works, the humanistic potential of which is comparable to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In 1207-1209. he founded the Franciscan order.

From among the Franciscans came the most advanced philosophers of the Middle Ages - Roger Bacon (1212-1294) and William of Ockham (about 1300 - about 1350), who opposed the scholastic dogmatism and called for an experimental study of nature. It was they who laid the foundation for the disintegration of official scholasticism.

In those years, interest in ancient culture, the study of ancient languages, and translations of ancient authors was intensively revived. The first prominent representatives of the Italian Renaissance were petrarch (1304-1374) and Bocaccio (1313-1375), although, undoubtedly, it was Dante (1265-1321) was the forerunner of the Italian Renaissance.

Science of the Catholic countries of Europe in the XIII-XIV centuries. was in the firm hands of the church. However, already in the XII century. the first universities were established in Bologna and Paris; in the 14th century there were more than 40 of them. All of them were in the hands of the church, and theology occupied the main place in teaching. Church councils of 1209 and 1215 decided to ban the teaching of Aristotle's physics and mathematics. In the XIII century. prominent representative of the Dominicans Thomas Aquinas (1225-1276) formulated the official teaching of Catholicism, using some of the reactionary aspects of the teachings of Aristotle, Ibn Sina, and others, giving them their own religious and mystical character.

Undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas was an outstanding philosopher and theologian, a systematizer of scholasticism on the methodological basis of Christian Aristotelianism (the doctrine of act and potency, form and matter, substance and accidents, etc.). He formulated five proofs of the existence of God, described as the root cause, the ultimate goal of existence, etc. Recognizing the relative independence of natural being and the human mind (the concept natural law and others), Thomas Aquinas argued that nature is completed in grace, reason - in faith, philosophical knowledge and natural theology, based on the analogy of beings, - in supernatural revelation. Thomas Aquinas' main writings are Summa Theologia and Summa Against the Gentiles. The teachings of Aquinas underlie such philosophical and religious concepts as Thomism and neo-Thomism.

Development international relations and navigation, the rapid growth of cities contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons, aroused the keen interest of Europeans in geographical knowledge and discoveries. In world history, the entire XII century. and the first half of the thirteenth century. represent the period of the exit of Western Europe from centuries of hibernation and the awakening of a stormy intellectual life in it.

At this time, the main factor in the expansion of the geographical representations of European peoples were the crusades undertaken between 1096 and 1270. under the pretext of liberating the Holy Land. Communication between Europeans and Syrians, Persians and Arabs greatly enriched their Christian culture.

In those years, representatives of the Eastern Slavs also traveled a lot. Daniel from Kyiv , for example, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Benjamin of Tudela traveled to different countries of the East.

A noticeable turning point in the development of geographical concepts occurred approximately in the middle of the 13th century, one of the reasons for which was the Mongol expansion, which reached its extreme western limit by 1242. Since 1245, the Pope and many Christian crowns began to send their embassies and missions to the Mongol khans for diplomatic and intelligence purposes and in the hope of converting the Mongol rulers to Christianity. Merchants followed the diplomats and missionaries to the east. Greater accessibility of countries under Mongol rule compared to Muslim countries, as well as the presence of a well-established system of communications and means of communication opened the way for Europeans to Central and East Asia.

In the XIII century, namely from 1271 to 1295, Marco Polo traveled through China, visited India, Ceylon, South Vietnam, Burma, the Malay Archipelago, Arabia and East Africa. After the journey of Marco Polo, merchant caravans were often equipped from many countries of Western Europe to China and India (146).

The study of the northern outskirts of Europe was successfully continued by Russian Novgorodians. After they in the XII-XIII centuries. All major rivers of the European North were discovered; they paved the way to the Ob basin through the Sukhona, Pechora and Northern Urals. The first campaign to the Lower Ob (to the Gulf of Ob), about which there are indications in the annals, was undertaken in 1364-1365. At the same time, Russian sailors moved east along northern shores Eurasia. By the end of the XV century. they explored the southwestern coast of the Kara Sea, the Ob and Taz Bays. At the beginning of the XV century. Russians sailed to Grumant (Spitsbergen archipelago). However, it is possible that these voyages began much earlier (2,13,14,21,28,31,85,119,126,191,192,279).

Unlike Asia, Africa remained for the Europeans of the 13th-15th centuries. almost unexplored mainland, with the exception of its northern outskirts.

With the development of navigation, the emergence of a new type of maps is associated - portolans, or complex charts, which were of direct practical importance. They appeared in Italy and Catalonia around 1275-1280. Early portolans were images of the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, often made with very high accuracy. Bays, small islands, shoals, etc. were especially carefully indicated on these drawings. Later, portolans appeared on the western coasts of Europe. All portolans were oriented to the north, at a number of points compass directions were applied to them, for the first time a linear scale was given. Portolans were in use until the 17th century, when they began to be replaced by nautical charts in the Mercator projection.

Along with portolans, unusually accurate for their time, in the late Middle Ages there were also "monastery cards" which for a long time retained their primitive character. Later they increased in format and became more detailed and precise.

Despite the significant expansion of the spatial outlook, XIII and XIV centuries. gave very little new in the field of scientific geographical ideas and ideas. Even the descriptive-regional direction did not show big movement forward. The term "geography" itself at that time, apparently, was not used at all, although literary sources contain extensive information related to the field of geography. This information in the XIII-XV centuries, of course, became even more numerous. The main place among the geographical descriptions of that time is occupied by the stories of the crusaders about the wonders of the East, as well as writings about travel and the travelers themselves. Of course, this information is not equivalent both in volume and in objectivity.

The greatest value among all the geographical works of that period is the "Book" of Marco Polo (146). Contemporaries reacted to its content very skeptically and with great distrust. Only in the second half of the XIV century. and at a later time, the book of Marco Polo began to be valued as a source of various information about the countries of East, Southeast and South Asia. This work was used, for example, by Christopher Columbus during his wanderings to the shores of America. Up until the 16th century. Marco Polo's book served as an important source of various information for compiling maps of Asia (146).

Especially popular in the XIV century. used descriptions of fictional travel, full of legends and stories of miracles.

On the whole, it can be said that the Middle Ages were marked by an almost complete degeneration of general physical geography. The Middle Ages practically did not give new ideas in the field of geography and only preserved for posterity some ideas of ancient authors, thereby preparing the first theoretical prerequisites for the transition to the Great geographical discoveries (110,126,279).

Marco Polo and his Book. The most famous travelers of the Middle Ages were the Venetian merchants, the Polo brothers and the son of one of them, Marco. In 1271, when Marco Polo was seventeen years old, he went on a long journey to China with his father and uncle. The Polo brothers had already visited China up to this point, spending nine years on the way back and forth - from 1260 to 1269. Great Khan The Mongols and the Emperor of China invited them to visit his country once again. The return journey to China lasted four years; seventeen more years three Venetian merchants stayed in this country.

Marco served with the khan, who sent him on official missions to various regions of China, which allowed him to acquire in-depth knowledge of the culture and nature of this country. The activity of Marco Polo was so useful for the khan that the khan with great displeasure agreed to Polo's departure.

In 1292, the Khan provided all the Polos with a flotilla of thirteen ships. Some of them were so large that the number of their team exceeded a hundred people. In total, together with the Polo merchants, about 600 passengers were accommodated on all these ships. The flotilla left the port located in South China, approximately from the place where modern city Quanzhou. Three months later, the ships reached the islands of Java and Sumatra, where they stayed for five months, after which the voyage continued.

Travelers visited the island of Ceylon and South India, and then, following along its western coast, went to the Persian Gulf, dropping anchor in ancient port Ormuz. By the end of the voyage, out of 600 passengers, only 18 survived, and most of the ships perished. But all three Polos returned unharmed to Venice in 1295 after a twenty-five-year absence.

During the naval battle of 1298 in the war between Genoa and Venice, Marco Polo was captured and until 1299 was kept in a Genoese prison. While in prison, he dictated stories about his travels to one of the prisoners. His descriptions of life in China and the perilous adventures on the way back and forth were so vivid and lively that they were often taken as products of a fervent imagination. In addition to stories about the places where he directly visited, Marco Polo also mentioned Chipango, or Japan, and the island of Madagascar, which, according to him, was located at the southern limit of the inhabited earth. Since Madagascar was located much south of the equator, it became obvious that the sizzling, sultry zone was not such at all and belonged to the inhabited lands.

However, it should be noted that Marco Polo was not a professional geographer and did not even suspect the existence of such a field of knowledge as geography. Nor was he aware of the heated discussions between those who believed in the uninhabitability of the hot zone and those who disputed this notion. He also heard nothing of the controversy between those who believed that the underestimated value of the earth's circumference was correct, following Posidonius, Marines of Tyre, and Ptolemy in this, and those who preferred the calculations of Eratosthenes. Marco Polo did not know anything about the assumptions of the ancient Greeks that the eastern tip of the Oikumene is located near the mouth of the Ganges, nor did he hear about Ptolemy's statement that the Indian Ocean "is closed" from the south by land. It is doubtful that Marco Polo ever attempted to determine the latitude, let alone the longitude, of the places he visited. However, he tells you how many days you need to spend and in what direction you need to move in order to reach one or another point. He does not say anything about his attitude to the geographical representations of previous times. At the same time, his book is one of those that tell about the great geographical discoveries. But in medieval Europe it was perceived as one of the numerous and ordinary books of that time, filled with the most incredible, but very interesting stories. It is common knowledge that Columbus had a personal copy of Marco Polo's book with his own notes (110,146).

Prince Henry the Navigator and sea ​​trips Portuguese . Prince Heinrich , nicknamed the Navigator, was the organizer of major expeditions of the Portuguese. In 1415, the Portuguese army under the command of Prince Henry attacked and stormed the Muslim stronghold on the southern coast of the Strait of Gibraltar in Ceuta. Thus, for the first time, a European power came into possession of a territory lying outside Europe. With the occupation of this part of Africa, the period of colonization of overseas territories by Europeans began.

In 1418, Prince Heinrich founded the world's first geographical Research institute. In Sagrisha, Prince Heinrich built a palace, a church, astronomical observatory, a building for storing maps and manuscripts, as well as houses for the staff of this institute. He invited here scientists of different faiths (Christians, Jews, Muslims) from all over the Mediterranean. Among them were geographers, cartographers, mathematicians, astronomers, and translators capable of reading manuscripts written in different languages.

someone Jakome from Mallorca was appointed chief geographer. He was given the task of improving the methods of navigation and then teaching them to the Portuguese captains, as well as teaching them decimal system calculus. It was also necessary to find out, on the basis of documents and maps, the possibility of sailing to the Spicy Islands, following first south along the African coast. As a result, a number of very important and difficult questions. Are these lands near the equator habitable? Does the skin turn black in people who get there, or is it fiction? What are the dimensions of the Earth? Is the Earth as big as Marin of Tyre thought? Or is it the way the Arab geographers imagined it, having carried out their measurements in the vicinity of Baghdad?

Prince Heinrich was developing a new type of ship. The new Portuguese caravels had two or three masts and a Latin sailing equipment. They were rather slow-moving, but they were distinguished by their stability and the ability to travel long distances.

Prince Henry's captains gained experience and self-confidence by sailing to the Canary and Azores. At the same time, Prince Henry sent his more experienced captains on long voyages along the African coast.

The first reconnaissance voyage of the Portuguese was undertaken in 1418. But soon the ships turned back, as their teams were afraid to approach the unknown equator. Despite repeated attempts, it took 16 years for the Portuguese ships to pass 2607 'N in their advance to the south. At this latitude, lying just south of the Canary Islands, on the African coast, a low sandy promontory called Bojador juts out into the ocean. A strong ocean current runs along it, directed to the south. At the foot of the cape, it forms whirlpools, marked by foaming wave crests. Whenever the ships approached this place, the teams demanded to stop sailing. Of course, there was boiling water here, as ancient Greek scientists wrote about!!! This is the place where people should turn black!!! Moreover, an Arab map of this coast immediately south of Bojador showed the hand of the devil rising from the water. However, on the portolan of 1351, nothing unusual was shown near Bojador, and he himself was only a small cape. In addition, in Sagrisha there was an account of the travels of the Phoenicians led by Hanno , in time immemorial sailing far south of Bojador.

In 1433 the captain of Prince Henry Gil Eanish tried to go around Cape Bojador, but his crew rebelled and he was forced to return to Sagrish.

In 1434, Captain Gilles Eanish resorted to a maneuver suggested by Prince Henry. From the Canary Islands, he boldly turned into the open ocean so far that the land disappeared from his eyes. BUT south of latitude Bojador, he sent his ship to the east and, approaching the shore, made sure that the water did not boil there and no one turned into a black man. The Bojador barrier was taken. The following year, Portuguese ships penetrated far south from Cape Bojador.

Around 1441, Prince Henry's ships sailed so far south that they were already reaching the transitional zone between desert and humid climates, and even countries beyond it. South of Cap Blanc, on the territory of modern Mauritania, the Portuguese captured first a man and a woman, and then ten more people. They also found some gold. In Portugal, this caused a sensation, and hundreds of volunteers immediately appeared who wanted to sail south.

Between 1444 and 1448 almost forty Portuguese ships visited the African coast. As a result of these voyages, 900 Africans were captured for sale into slavery. Discoveries as such were forgotten in the pursuit of profits from the slave trade.

Prince Henry, however, managed to return the captains he had nurtured to righteous path research and discovery. But this happened after ten years. Now the prince knew that a much more valuable reward awaited him if he could sail around Africa and reach India.

The coast of Guinea was explored by the Portuguese in 1455-1456. The sailors of Prince Henry also visited the Cape Verde Islands. Prince Henry the Navigator died in 1460, but the business he started continued. More and more expeditions left the coast of Portugal to the south. In 1473, a Portuguese ship crossed the equator and failed to catch fire. A few years later, the Portuguese landed on the coast and erected their stone monuments (padrans) there - evidence of their claims to the African coast. Placed near the mouth of the Congo River, these monuments, according to eyewitnesses, were still preserved in the last century.

Among the glorious captains of Prince Henry was Bartolomeu Dias. Dias, sailing along the African coast south of the equator, got into a zone of headwind and current directed to the north. To avoid the storm, he turned sharply to the west, moving away from the coast of the continent, and only when the weather improved, he again swam to the east. However, having traveled, according to his calculations, in this direction more time than it was necessary to reach the coast, he turned north in the hope of finding land. So, he swam to the shores South Africa at Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth). On the way back, he passed Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope. This brave voyage took place in 1486-1487. (110)

ON BOATS, IN THE SADDLE AND ON FOOT

A number of scientists tend to consider the beginning of the early Western European Middle Ages of the 3rd century BC. n. e. We can agree with R. Hennig that the end of ancient geography should be dated to the end of the 2nd century. n. e. He writes: “... it was in the 2nd century that the Roman Empire reached the apogee of its power and territorial expansion ... The geographical horizons of the people of this era reached a breadth that remained unsurpassed until the 15th century, if we exclude the study of the northern countries ... When the limits of the known ancient world expanded as much as possible, the great genius Ptolemy 1 united the entire body of geographical knowledge into a single whole and presented them in a brilliant frame of broad generalizations... research expeditions only led to the re-conquest for geographical science of those countries that were already known and often visited in antiquity” (Hennig, 1961, vol. II, p. 21).

However, one cannot fully agree with the last statement of the scientist, since during the Middle Ages Western Europeans had the opportunity to get acquainted not only with the northern regions of Europe and the regions of the North Atlantic, unknown to the ancient peoples of Greece and Rome, but also with the unknown vast expanses of Europe, with its northern outskirts, with regions of Central and East Asia, with the western shores of Africa, about which the ancient geographers had almost no idea, or had vague and half-legendary information. The Middle Ages, in particular Western Europe, contributed to the expansion of the spatial horizons thanks to numerous land campaigns and sea voyages.

The Turin wheel map of 1080 can serve as an example of maps (drawings) made in monasteries as illustrations of biblical writings. It is kept in the library of the city of Turin. It depicts the continents of Africa, Europe and Asia, separated from each other by the Mediterranean Sea and the rivers Nile and Tanais (Don), which are located in the form of a capital letter T of the Latin alphabet. The outer circle, in which the letter T is inscribed, corresponds to the ocean surrounding the entire land. Such a layout of the continents, as the researchers suggest, was first proposed by the Spanish encyclopedist, Bishop of the city of Seville Isidore, the author of the famous Etymology in the Middle Ages. The map is oriented to the east: in upper half Asia is placed, in the lower left part of the map - Europe, in the lower right - Africa. This position was based on religious performance Christians: The East, that is, Asia, where the "holy places" of Palestine and the "Holy Sepulcher" are located, as it were, crowns the map. At the very top of the map, the figures of Adam and Eve symbolized the biblical paradise; in the center of the map is the city of Jerusalem. On the Turin map, as well as on the oval map compiled around 776 by the monk Beat, another fourth is depicted, southern mainland(south of Africa), inhabited by antipodes, is an undoubted echo of ancient ideas.

If in ancient times the main factors that contributed to the expansion of spatial horizons and led to territorial geographical discoveries were military campaigns (Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC to Western and Central Asia and India, Roman legionnaires through the Sahara and Nubia, military expeditions of Julius Caesar to Gaul and Britain in the 1st century BC, etc.), as well as trade relations between the Greco-Roman world and other peoples (Gippal’s voyage to India and his “discovery” of winds periodically changing their direction - monsoons, the voyage of Greek and Egyptian sailors to the coast of Indochina, which was reflected on the map of Ptolemy, or the journey of Pytheas from Massalia to the North Atlantic, etc.), then in the early Middle Ages begins to acquire certain value another factor, namely, the dissemination by Christian missionaries of their teaching among the pagan peoples of Europe, Northeast Africa, Western, South and East Asia.

Of course, this factor could not be as decisive as K. Ritter imagined it, noting that “the history of the spread of Christianity” in medieval Europe “is at the same time the history of discoveries and successes in the field of geography” (1864, p. 117 ). To some extent, he was echoed by A. Gettner, who wrote that "... the spatial expansion of geographical knowledge approximately coincides with the spread of Christianity" (1930, p. 36). Moreover, Gettner argued that the clergy were the only carriers of science in that era. However, at the same time, he noted that the main factor in the spread of Roman Christianity was that it spread from the Mediterranean region to the north, covering all of Western Europe, while North Africa turned out to be inaccessible to him due to the spread of Islam among the Arabs in the 7th century. A. Gettner draws attention to the fact that numerous pilgrimages to Rome and Palestine contributed to the spread of geographical knowledge in the states of Western Europe. Several descriptions of this kind of travel have survived to our time. C. R. Beasley (1979) also believes that medieval pilgrims had a large role as discoverers, especially from the time of Charlemagne to the Crusades.

Apparently, the factor of the spread of Christianity cannot be underestimated, since pilgrimages to the largest religious centers of the Christian world played a big role in the history of medieval trade, since the pilgrims themselves often performed the functions of small merchants, and their routes served as the basis for the emerging network of trade routes.

Absolutely certain role in expanding the spatial horizons of Western Europeans in southeast direction played a pilgrimage to Palestine, on eastern shores Mediterranean Sea in order to visit the "Holy Sepulcher" and other "holy places", which are described in the Bible. According to Beasley, these pilgrimages began from the time of Emperor Constantine

"Map of the whole world" by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (43).

(who made Constantinople the new capital of the Roman Empire in 324-330). His mother Helena, through her visit to Palestine, the construction of a Christian church in Bethlehem, and the “finding” of relics in Jerusalem (the remains of the cross on which Christ was crucified) contributed to the fact that the pilgrimage began to be considered the dominant fashion.

A. Gettner showed that the Greek, or Byzantine, East in the early Middle Ages was a completely different cultural area, separated from the Western Roman Empire after the division in 395 of the once united Roman Empire into two independent states. In Byzantium they spoke a different (Greek) language than in the countries of Western Europe, they also adhered to a different religion - Orthodox, and not Catholic, characteristic of the Western Roman Empire; here, in Byzantium, there was also a different geographical outlook, since a lively trade was maintained with Asia Minor.

In 569-571. Byzantine ambassador Zimarch made a trip to the Turks in Altai. The description of this journey, during which the Aral Sea was discovered as an independent basin, has come down to us in the historical work of Menander Petiktor (who lived in the second half of the 6th century) “On the reign of Emperor Justinian”. Also in the VI century. a voyage to India was made by Constantine of Antioch (who, after being tonsured a monk, took the name of Cosmas Indikoplova). As a merchant and engaged in trade, Constantine sailed in three seas: Roma (Mediterranean), Arabian (Red) and Persian (Persian Gulf). In the Eritrean Sea, as the Indian Ocean was called at that time, Constantine was caught in a severe storm. Whether he reached Hindustan is unknown, but he undoubtedly visited the island of Taprobana (Ceylon, modern Sri Lanka), which is described in the XI book (chapter) of his work. In 522-525. Constantine visited Ethiopia and the Somali Peninsula (where the "Land-Bearing Land" was located). He may have visited the source of the Blue Nile, which rises from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands. He knew the Sinai Peninsula. Researchers believe that he became a monk in Sinai, where his companion and friend Mina ended his life. Becoming a monk, Cosmas wrote "Christian Topography" (c. 547-550), which, on the one hand, provides important information about distant countries, and on the other hand, draws a completely fantastic picture of the world, which caused criticism of the Armenian scientists of the 7th century. and Patriarch Photius of Constantinople. It is known that Cosmas was familiar with the Persian Mar Aba, who mastered the Syrian and ancient Greek culture. From him he borrowed his cosmographic views of the Nestorian Christians.

"Christian topography", widespread in Byzantium and known in Armenia, remained unfamiliar to Western European figures for a long time. In any case, the name of Cosmas Indikoplova is found only in a parchment list of the 6th century, stored in Florence in the Laurentian Library. The authors of the early Western European Middle Ages do not mention the name of Cosmas.

Apart from the already mentioned travels in the eastern direction - Cosmas Indikoplova to India and East Africa and the embassy of Zimarch to the Altai through Central Asia - the earliest travel to the East from Byzantium was an overland journey of two Christian monks around 500 to the country "Serinda" sent by the emperor Justinian for gren of silkworms. The story about this is contained in the work of the historian Procopius from Caesarea "War with the Goths." This journey was very important from an economic point of view, since before that time in Europe they were not engaged in sericulture and were forced to buy Chinese silk (through the Persians or Ethiopians) at a high price. True, it still remains unknown where exactly the country called by Procopius “Serinda” was located, since this geographical name is not found anywhere else in the literature of that time. Some researchers localize it with China or Indo-China, but others, in particular R. Hennig (1961), convincingly show that the monks sent by the emperor did not visit China, but Sogdiana, that is, in the area lying between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers , with its capital in Samarkand, where, according to some historical sources, in the VI century. raised silkworms and produced silk. The monks secretly smuggled grenae of silkworms in their staffs to Byzantium and thus created an opportunity for the production of silk here.

In 636 the Christian missionary Olopena (Alopena) traveled to China. This is evidenced by a stone stele with a text in Chinese and Syriac, installed in one of the Chinese cities around 780. This journey in time coincides with the spread of Nestorian Christianity in China, brought to this country as early as the 7th century. Nestorian monks. There it flourished for about 200 years, during which churches were built in many cities. According to scientists, the establishment of a stone stele speaks of fairly close ties between the East and West of the ecumene of that time.

It should be said that Christianity in Western Europe spread quite quickly. Already by 380, a significant part of the vast Roman Empire (before its division into Eastern and Western) was considered Christian. After Christianity was recognized as the official religion in the empire by the edict of Emperor Constantine in 313, this religion began to spread among other, non-Roman peoples.

So, in 330, the Iberians, the inhabitants of Western Transcaucasia, were converted to Christianity, and soon the first Christian church was built on the southern slope of the Caucasus Range. In 354 the monk Theophilos spread Christianity in South Arabia. In Aden, Jafar, and Oman, Roman merchants kept merchants, many of whom were Christians. Somewhat earlier, in 340, the missionaries Frumentius and Edesius preached their religion in the Aksumite kingdom, an ancient state in the territory modern Ethiopia. Their writings (which have not come down to us) served as the basis for a chapter on the planting of Christianity in Northeast Africa, which was included in the "History of the Church" by Rufinus of Turan. This work supplemented the work of the same name by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, written in the 4th century BC.

From the beginning of the 4th c. began the spread of Christianity in the territory of Armenia. In 301, the baptism of King Trdat (Tiridate) III and his court, along with the troops stationed there, took place in Bagavan, carried out by presbyter Gregory the Illuminator.

100-150 years later, the Christian religion spread from Gaul throughout Western Europe and penetrated into the British Isles. Around 450, a British resident Patrick became an Irish bishop, whose letters contain perhaps the first geographical description of the island of Ireland. It names some mountain ranges (for example, Antrim), lakes (Lochney and others), rivers (Shannon and others). True, some modern researchers the authenticity of Patrick's letters is disputed. So, there is an opinion that even before Patrick, Ireland was already a Christian country, and Patrick himself was sent there to eradicate the heresy of Pelagius 2 and his activities on the island were limited to the Wicklow area (in the east of the island). The legend of Patrick as "the apostle of all Ireland" was created by the Roman catholic church only in the 7th century, in order to have a “patron of the country” alien to heresies (Magidovichi, 1970).

Apparently, about 670, to the north of the British Isles, Irish Christian hermits discovered the Farer Islands, where only wild sheep lived. This was first reported in 825 by the Irish monk Dikuil, the author of the above-mentioned treatise On the Measurement of the Earth, the first geography manual written in the empire of Charlemagne.

In addition, the 7th century applies very popular, overgrown legendary details a legend about the navigation of the monk Brandan on the Atlantic Ocean, which has been preserved in Irish epic tales. The literary work "The Sailing of St. Brandan", which dates back to the 10th century, speaks of the discoveries by this navigator of the shores of Greenland and Jan Mayen Island in the North Atlantic. I.P. and V.M. Magidovichi (1982) tend to consider Brandan a historical person, to whose activity the discoveries of these geographical objects can be attributed, but R. Ramsey (1977) has a negative attitude towards the legend, despite the fact that on the famous Hereford map world, created in 1260 by the monk Richard Heldingham, even the sailing routes of Brandan are shown 3 .

The most famous Western European travelers of the end of the 7th century. were the Frankish or Gallic bishop Arculf and the Irish priest Willibald. The first of them visited Palestine shortly after the conquest of Asia Minor by the Muslims. Around 690, he visited Jerusalem, was in the Jordan Valley (in the waters of this river, according to the biblical legend, Jesus Christ was baptized by John the Baptist), visited the city of Nazareth and other "holy places". Then he traveled to Egypt, where he was impressed by the size of the city of Alexandria and the huge Pharos lighthouse (even in ancient times considered one of the "seven wonders of the world"). Arculf was struck by the nature of Egypt. This country, he said, "without rain is very fertile." Arkulf climbed up the Nile "to the city of elephants" (as he called the ancient Elephantine - now Aswan), beyond which, at the rapids, the river "fell in a wild wreck from the cliff" (Beasley, 1979, p. 39).

On the way back, when the pilgrims sailed past Sicily, he was struck by the "island of Vulcan" (in the group of the Aeolian Islands), "spewing flames day and night with a noise like thunder." Arkulf adds that, according to people who have already been here, this volcano makes a particularly loud noise on Fridays and Saturdays.

Willibald set off from Ireland on his journey in 721. In describing the journey, he reports that when he sailed from Naples to Sicily, he saw a volcano, which, when erupting, if the veil of St. Agatha was brought to it, “immediately subsides” (Beasley, C 42) . Further, sailing past the islands of Samos and Cyprus, he reached the “country of the Saracens”, where the entire group of pilgrims was imprisoned on suspicion of espionage, from where, however, everyone was soon released thanks to the intercession of some Spaniard. Willibald then manages to visit Damascus, where he receives a pass to visit the "holy places" of Palestine. He walked through the “holy places” of Jerusalem, visited the springs of the rivers Jor and Dan, saw the “glorious church of Helen” in Bethlehem, but he was especially moved by the sight of the columns in the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. These columns, according to legend, had the ability to cleanse a person from all sins if he managed to crawl between them and the wall. On the way back, sailing among the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Willibald, like Arculf, saw a volcanic eruption, throwing pumice stone onto the coast of the island and into the sea. According to him, in the mouth of the volcano was the tyrant Theodoric, who was doomed to eternal torment for his "hardened Arianism." Willibald wanted to see all this for himself, but he could not climb the steep slopes of the mountain.

So in the works of the pilgrims, along with the description of the objects actually seen, fantastic information was also reported and legendary explanations of natural phenomena were given.

As emphasized by Beasley (1979), the attitude of Catholicism of that time (8th century) to the countries known world contributed to the fact that Willibald's report was published with the sanction of Pope Gregory III along with the report of Arculf and received recognition, becoming a good commentary on the old Itinerary of Bordeaux, compiled 400 years earlier.

The geographical information required by pilgrims and set forth in the two main "guides" compiled by Arculf and Willibald was confirmed and supplemented by the monks Fidelius (who visited Egypt around 750) and Bernard the Wise, who passed through all the "holy places" of Palestine around 867.

True, this information was more historical and geographical than purely geographical. Thus, Fidelius is fascinated by the “granaries of Joseph” (as Christians at that time usually called the Egyptian pyramids, which amazed them with their size). According to biblical tradition, Joseph the Beautiful, who served with the Egyptian pharaoh, accumulated an unprecedented supply of grain over the course of seven years of abundance, which he kept in special granaries. At the onset of famine years, he began to sell bread to the Egyptians and residents of other countries. (This legend was also widespread in the Muslim world.) Fidelius describes in detail his voyage along the Necho freshwater channel (which in ancient times connected one of the channels of the Nile with the Red Sea), where Moses, according to the Bible, crossed the dry sea with the Israelites, and then very briefly reports sailing around the Sinai Peninsula to the pier of Ezion-Geber (in the Gulf of Aqaba).

Bernard the Wise, a monk from the French peninsula of Brittany, describing the sights of Jerusalem, did not forget to talk about the inns for pilgrims that existed at that time, built by order of the King of the Franks, Charlemagne.

Finally, around 850, one of the pilgrims (his name remains unknown) also wrote a treatise entitled "On the Houses of God in Jerusalem." This work, along with the "guides" of Fidelius and Bernard the Wise, was one of the last geographical monuments of this kind, which, according to Beasley (1979), preceded the "Norman era".

Notes:
1 This refers to the Alexandrian geographer and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who created a map of the world known at that time and compiled a description of it in the work "Geographical Manual" (abbreviated often called simply "Geography").
2 On Pelagius (the author of the doctrine of free will as the source of virtuous and malicious actions, which was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus in 430), see: Donini, 1979.
3 See rec. Kogan M. A. on the book. Ramsey R. "Discoveries that never were" (1978).
4 See: Maiorov, 1978. Ch. 4, 5; Sokolov, 1979.
5 V ancient Russian literature another work of Honorius, “Lucidarium” (from the Latin “Elacidarium” - enlightener), was circulated in manuscripts, which set out cosmographic and geographical views. (See: Raikov, 1937.)
6 About Cassiodorus see: Golenishchev-Kutuzov IN Medieval Latin Literature of Italy. M., 1972.
7 See: "From the Editor" in the book. Kiseleva L. I. “What they talk about medieval manuscripts» (1978).

Source: biofile.ru

The first information about geographical ideas appeared from the moment of writing. One can testify to the existence of two independent centers of geographical thought of the ancient world: Greco-Roman and Chinese. The thinkers of the ancient period described the world close to them in some detail, and also added a lot of fantastic things about distant lands. The combination of materialistic and idealistic views is a characteristic feature of ancient scientists. Many philosophers and historians dealt with geography. At that time there was no SEG, even a single geography was a reference branch of knowledge. In ancient times, two directions arose: 1) a description of special countries, their nature, the ethnic make-up of the population, etc. (Herodotus, Strabo, etc.); 2) the study of the Earth as a whole, its place relative to other planets, its shape and size (Ptolemy, Eratosthenes, etc.). The first direction was called regional geography, the second - general geography.

In European culture, the father of geography and history is the Greek Herodotus, who traveled a lot and in his descriptions spoke about distant lands and previously unknown peoples. Herodotus can also be considered the father of ethnography, because he vividly described the traditions of other peoples. He also gave rise to geographical determinism.

The second prominent Greek, Aristotle, developed the concept of the different belonging of the Earth for human life and dependence on geographical latitude. He presented the conditions of settlement as a function of geographical latitude, gave instructions on the best location of cities. The ideas of Aristotle were the basis for the development of science in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

Between 330 - 300 years. BC. Pytheas traveled to the northwestern part of Europe. He described the way of life and occupations of the inhabitants of the British Isles, discovered Iceland. He noted a change in the nature of agriculture from south to north. Pytheas made the first scientific journey, i.e. journey with a purpose scientific research. Upon returning home, no one believed him at the expense of what he saw, but in vain, because. he first drew attention to the phenomena that today constitute the interests of agricultural geography.

At the beginning of our era in Greece there already existed a guide for navigators (periples) and travelers (periges). The peripluses described in detail sea ​​shores and ports. Periplus covered the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the eastern coast of Africa. The authors of perigeses were more often logographers, i.e. writers who traveled the earth and described what they saw. Logographs made up specific geographical descriptions, in which special attention was paid to the life of the local population.

The campaigns of Alexander the Great (4th century BC) contributed to the spread of Greek culture. They were attended by scientists who collected information about various lands.

Unlike the Greek thinkers, the Romans contributed less to the field of geography. But even among them, original researchers can be noted. For government officials and military representatives of the Roman Empire, the ancient Greek geographer and historian Strabo created his "Geography". He considered it his task to provide the necessary information about the world, so this work was the first of its kind "reference book for the leadership apparatus." Strabo believed that every geographer should have mathematical knowledge. Strabo's "Geography" was found only 600 years after it was written, and those to whom this book was intended never saw it.

The ancient Romans were warlike and enterprising. Quite often, they expanded their geographical horizons through military campaigns.

At this time, in the east of Asia, there was another center of geographical thought - China. Generally European and Chinese world were securely isolated from each other, but over time they gradually recognized themselves and their neighbors.

Chinese philosophers differed from Greek philosophers mainly in that they gave paramount importance to the natural world. The geographical works of Chinese scientists can be divided into 8 groups: 1) works devoted to the study of people; 2) description of the regions of China; 3) description of other countries; 4) about travel; 5) books about the rivers of China; 6) description of the coasts of China; 7) local history works; 8) geographical encyclopedias.

The ancient Romans, unlike the ancient Greeks, were great pragmatists. They mainly collected various information about countries, while the Greeks were more inclined to generalize materials. The ancient Chinese combined these traits together. SEG is an ancient science, because the life and production activities of mankind are inseparable from the natural and social environment, so society sought to actively study them. Practical requirements in the ancient period made it necessary to study the natural conditions, population, natural wealth, settlements and communication routes, the economy of one's own and neighboring countries.

Development geographical ideas in the Middle Ages

In the period of the early Middle Ages, the productive forces were underdeveloped - science was under the influence of religion. In Christian Europe, the perception of the world has decreased to the size of the lands mastered by man. Most of the materialistic ideas of ancient scientists were considered heretical. At that time, religion accompanied the development of new knowledge: chronicles, descriptions, and books arose in monasteries. This period is characterized by isolation, separation and mass ignorance of people. The crusades raised from their places of residence large masses people who left their homes. Returning home, they brought rich trophies and information about other countries. In this period huge contribution Arabs, Normans and Chinese contributed to the development of geography. In the Middle Ages, the geographical science of China achieved great success. Between antiquity and the Middle Ages there was no deep abyss, as was believed by most scholars. In Western Europe, some geographical ideas of the ancient world were known. But at that time, scientists were not yet familiar with the writings of Aristotle, Strabo, Ptolemy. Philosophers of this time used mainly retellings of the writings of commentators on Aristotle's texts. Instead of the ancient naturalistic perception of nature, there was a mystical perception of it.

In the period of the early Middle Ages, starting from the 7th century, Arab scientists played an important role. With the expansion of the Arab expansion to the West, they became acquainted with the writings of ancient scholars. The geographical outlook of the Arabs was wide, they traded with many Mediterranean, Eastern and African countries. The Arab world was a "bridge" between Western and Eastern cultures. AT late XIV in. The Arabs made a great contribution to the development of cartography.

Some modern scholars consider Albertus Magnus the first European commentator on Aristotle's writings. He gave descriptions of different areas. It was the time of collecting new factual material, the time of empirical research using the analytical method, but with a scholastic contribution. Probably, that is why the monks, who revived some of the ideas of ancient geography, were engaged in this work.

Some Western scholars associate the development of economic geography with the name of Marco Polo, who wrote a book about life in China.

AT XII-XIII centuries some economic recovery began to appear in Europe, which was reflected in the development of crafts, trade, and commodity-money relations. After the 15th century Geographical research stopped both in China and in the Muslim world. But in Europe they began to expand. The main driving force behind this was the spread of Christianity and the need for precious metals and hot spices. The era of the great geographical discoveries gave a powerful impetus to the overall development of society and also the social sciences.

In the period of the late Middle Ages (XIV-XV centuries), SEG began to form as a science. At the beginning of this period, in the development of geographical science, a desire was revealed to " historical geography”, when researchers were looking for the location of objects that ancient thinkers spoke about in their writings.

Some scientists believe that the first economic and geographical work in history is the work of the Italian geographer Guicciardini "Description of the Netherlands", which was published in 1567. He gave general characteristics Netherlands, including an analysis of the geographical location, an assessment of the role of the sea and in the life of the country, the state of manufactories and trade. great attention devoted to the description of cities, and especially Antwerp. The work was illustrated with maps and city plans.

The theoretical substantiation of geography as a science was first made in 1650 by the geographer B. Varenius in the Netherlands. In the book "General Geography" he emphasized the trend of differentiation of geography, showed the connection between the geography of specific places and general geography. According to Varenius, works that characterize special places must be attributed to special geography. And works that describe general, universal laws that apply to all places - general geography. Varenius considered special geography the most important for practical activities, especially in the field of trade and economic relations between countries. General geography provides these foundations, and they must be rooted in practice. Thus, Varenius defined the subject of geography, the main methods of studying this science, showed that special and general geography are two interconnected and interacting parts of the whole. Varenius considered it necessary to characterize the inhabitants, their appearance, crafts, trade, culture, language, methods of government or state structure, religion, cities, significant places and famous people.

At the end of the Middle Ages, geographical knowledge from Western Europe reached the territory of Belarus. Belsky in 1551 published the first work in Polish on world geography, which was later translated into Belarusian and Russian, which testified to the spread of knowledge about the great geographical discoveries and different countries of the world in Eastern Europe.

1.1. prehistoric period. Representation primitive man about the world. Migration of peoples, trade relations and their importance for the dissemination of geographical knowledge.

1.2. Hearths of ancient civilization(Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Levant, India, China) and their role in the accumulation and development of geographical knowledge.

1.3. Successes in navigation and expansion of ideas about the inhabited world. Historical and geographical significance of the Bible. Chinese expeditions to India and Africa. Sailing of the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, around Africa to Northern Albion. Ancient cartographic images.

1.4. Ancient Greece: the origins of the main directions modern geography, the emergence of the first scientific ideas about the shape and size of the Earth. Geographic representations of Homer and Hesiod. Ancient Greek geographical descriptions of the seas (periples) and land (periegi). The significance of the campaigns of Alexander the Great in expanding the geographical horizons of the ancient Greeks. The first speculative theories of ancient geographers about the shape and size of the Earth, ideas about the relationship between land and sea spaces on Earth. Ionian (Miletian) and Elean (Pythagorean) schools. Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Herodotus and others. The first experimental measurements of the length of the earth's meridian. The emergence of ideas about different levels(scales) descriptions and display of the surrounding world: geographical and chorographic.

1.5. Ancient Rome: development of the practice of geography and geographical knowledge. Antique cartography. Geographical works of Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus and Ptolemy.

1.6. The first schemes of climatic zones and views on their habitability, the influence of these views on the expansion of the geographical horizons in the ancient world.

1.7. The general level of geographical representations in ancient times.

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§ 3. Geography of the ancient era

Discovery of the shape of the Earth. Knowledge of the shape of our planet was extremely important for the further development of geography and especially for the creation reliable maps. In ancient times (VIII century BC - IV century AD) the highest development of knowledge, including geographical, was in ancient Greece. Then travelers and merchants reported on the newly discovered land.

The scientists were faced with the task of bringing this heterogeneous information into one whole. But first, it is important to decide whether the Earth is flat, cylindrical or cubic - the data is about. Greek scientists thought about many? Why? Why does a ship, moving away from the shore, suddenly disappear from sight? Why does our gaze encounter some obstacle - the horizon line?

Why does the horizon expand as we go up? The concept of a flat earth did not answer these questions. Then there were hypotheses about the shape of the earth. In science, hypotheses are unproven assumptions or conjectures.

The first guess that our planet has the shape of a ball was expressed in Vst.

BC a greek mathematician Pythagoras . He believed that objects were based on numbers and geometric shapes. The perfect of all figures is the sphere, that is, the bullet. “The earth must be perfect,” Pythagoras reasoned. “Therefore, it must have the shape of a sphere!”

He proved the sphericity of the Earth in the IV century. BC uh another greek - Aristotle . For proof, he took the rounded shadow that the Earth casts on the Moon.

People see this shadow during lunar eclipses. Neither a cylinder, nor a cube, nor any other shape gives a round shadow. Aristotle also relied on observing the horizon. If our planet were flat, then in clear weather our eye would see through a telescope far to the edge.

The presence of the horizon is explained by the bending, sphericity of the Earth.

Indisputable evidence of the ingenious assumption of the Greeks was obtained through 2500 astronauts.

Geographic literature and maps. Information received by travelers and seafarers about earlier unknown land generalized by the Greek scientists-philosophers.

They wrote many works. The first geographical works were created by Aristotle, Eratosthenes, Strabo.

Eratosthenes used the data of history, astronomy, physics and mathematics to highlight geography as an independent science.

He also compiled the oldest map that has come down to us (3rd century BC). On it, the scientist depicted parts known at that time Europe, Asiaі Africa. Not by chance Eratosthenes called the father of geography, which indicates the recognition of his merits in its development.

In the second st. ClaudiusPtolemy made a more up-to-date map. On it, the world known to Europeans has already expanded significantly.

The map showed many geographic features. However, she was very approximate. Despite such "little things", maps and "geography" in the 8 books of Ptolemy were used for 14 centuries! The work of Greek scientists testifies to the origin of geography as a true science already in ancient times. However, it was mostly descriptive. And on the first maps, only an insignificant part of the space was reflected.

§ 1. Geographical ideas of the ancient world

But more

Entertaining geography

First geographical document

The poem "Odyssey" is considered such a document. It was written by the famous poet of ancient Greece, Homer, as they think, in the 9th century. BC eThis literary work contains geographical descriptions of many of the world's famous regions at that time .

Entertaining geography

Making the first maps

Even during military campaigns, the Greeks did not leave the desire to write down everything , what they saw.

In the troops of the outstanding emperor Alexander of Macedon (he was a student of Aristotle) ​​Appointed a special pedometer. These people counted the distances traveled, made descriptions of the routes of movement and put them on the map. Based on this information, another student of Aristotle, Dicaearchus, compiled a fairly detailed map of the then known lands.

Rice. World map of Eratosthenes (3rd century BC)

Rice.

Map of the worldClaudiusPtolemy (II century)

Rice. Modern physical map of the hemispheres

The first information about Ukrainian lands. VVst. BC e Greek traveler and historian Herodotus visited the Northern Black Sea region - where Ukraine is now located.

Everything he saw and heard during this and other travels, he outlined in 9 books of "History". For this heritage, Herodotus is called the father of history. However, in his descriptions, he said a lot geographic information. The information of Herodotus is the only landmark of the geography of the south of Ukraine. At that time there was a big country Scythia The dimensions of which caused the greatest surprise of the overseas guest.

For centuries, people have learned from the "History" of Herodotus about Europe, Asia and Africa. A learned Greek left us reliable information about our area. Guided by them and 500 years later testimony Strabo , We got a clear view of our land.

Questions and tasks

Who owns the first correct idea of ​​the shape of the Earth?

2. What evidence did the Greeks give in favor of the spherical shape of our planet?

3. Who wrote the first geographical work?

4. When and by whom were the first geographical maps created?

5. What continents and seas were known to the compilers of the first maps?

6. Compare the geographical maps of Eratosthenes and Ptolemy with the modern map of the hemispheres and establish differences in the image of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Antique mediterranean geography

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The pre-Socratic philosophical tradition has already generated many prerequisites for the emergence of geography. The oldest descriptions The Greeks called the lands "periods" (περίοδοι), that is, "detours"; this name was applied equally to maps and descriptions; it was often used and subsequently instead of the name "geography"; thus, Arrian calls by this name the general geography of Eratosthenes.

At the same time, the names “periplus” (περίπλος) were also used in the sense of a sea detour, description of the coast, and “perieges” (περιήγησις) - in the sense of a land detour or guide. information about countries remote from the coast - "perieges", containing a detailed description of countries, and such geographical works as Eratosthenes, which had the task of astronomical and mathematical determination of the size of the globe and the type and distribution of "inhabited land" (ήοίκουμένη) on its surfaces.

Strabo also gives the name "Perieges" to parts of his own work, which describes in detail the then known countries, sometimes, however, mixing the terms "Perieges" and "Periplus", while other authors clearly distinguish "Peripluses" from "Perigeses", and in some later authors the name "perieges" is used even in the sense of a visual representation of the entire inhabited earth.

There are indications that "periods" or "periples" (next to documents or letters on the founding of cities, "ktisis") were the first Greek manuscripts, the first experiments in applying the art of writing borrowed from the Phoenicians.

The compilers of geographical "detours" were called "logographers"; they were the first Greek prose writers and forerunners of the Greek historians.

Herodotus used them a lot in compiling his history. Few of these "detours" have come down to us, and then of a later time: some of them, like the "Periplus of the Red Sea" (I century AD) or the "Periplus of Pontus Euxinus" - Arrian (II century after R. X .), constitute important sources on ancient geography. The "periplus" form was used in later time to describe the "inhabited earth", making around it, as it were, a mental, imaginary detour.

This character is, for example, the geography of Pomponius Mela (I century AD).

Report: Geographical Ideas of the Ancient World

e.) and others.

The name "bypass" was all the more appropriate in this case because ancient representation Greeks about the Earth was connected with the idea of ​​a circle. This representation, naturally evoked by the circular line of the visible horizon, is already found in Homer, where it has only the peculiarity that the earth's disk was represented by the "Ocean" washed by the river, beyond which the mysterious realm of shadows was located.

The ocean - the river - soon gave way to the ocean - the sea in the sense of the outer sea, surrounding the inhabited earth, but the concept of the Earth, as a flat circle, continued to live for a long time, at least in the popular imagination, and was revived with renewed vigor in the Middle Ages.

Although Herodotus already scoffed at those who imagined the Earth to be a regular disk, as if carved by a skilled carpenter, and considered it unproven that inhabited earth was surrounded on all sides by the ocean, however, the idea that the Earth is a round plane, carrying on itself in the form of an island a round “inhabited earth”, dominated during the period of the most ancient Ionian school.

It found expression in the maps of the Earth, which were also made round and the first of which is usually attributed to Anaximander. We also heard about a round map of Aristagoras of Miletus, a contemporary of Hecataeus, made on copper and depicting the sea, land and rivers.

From the testimonies of Herodotus and Aristotle, we can conclude that on the most ancient maps the inhabited earth was also depicted as round and surrounded by an ocean; from the west, from the Pillars of Hercules, the middle of the ecumene was cut through by the internal (Mediterranean) sea, to which the eastern internal sea approached from the eastern margin, and both of these seas served to separate the southern semicircle of the Earth from the northern one.

Round flat maps were in use in Greece as early as the time of Aristotle and later, when the sphericity of the Earth was already recognized by almost all philosophers.

Anaximander suggested that the Earth was a cylinder and made the revolutionary suggestion that people must also live on the other side of the "cylinder". He also published separate geographical works.

In the IV century. BC e. - V c. n. e. ancient scientists-encyclopedists tried to create a theory about the origin and structure of the surrounding world, to depict the countries known to them in the form of drawings.

The results of these studies were a speculative idea of ​​the Earth as a ball (Aristotle), the creation of maps and plans, the determination of geographical coordinates, the introduction of parallels and meridians, cartographic projections. Cratet Mallsky, a Stoic philosopher, studied the structure of the globe and created a model - a globe, he also suggested how the weather conditions of the northern and southern hemispheres should correlate.

"Geography" in 8 volumes of Claudius Ptolemy contained information about more than 8000 geographical names and coordinates of almost 400 points.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene for the first time measured the meridian arc and estimated the size of the Earth, he owns the term "geography" (earth description). Strabo was the founder of regional studies, geomorphology and paleogeography.

In the works of Aristotle, the foundations of hydrology, meteorology, oceanology are outlined, and the division of geographical sciences is outlined.

Geography of the Middle Ages

Until the middle of the XV century. the discoveries of the Greeks were forgotten, and the "center of geographical science" shifted to the East.

The leading role in geographical discoveries passed to the Arabs. These are scientists and travelers - Ibn Sina, Biruni, Idrisi, Ibn Battuta. Important geographical discoveries in Iceland, Greenland and North America were made by the Normans, as well as the Novgorodians, who reached Svalbard and the mouth of the Ob.

Venetian merchant Marco Polo discovered East Asia for Europeans.

And Afanasy Nikitin, who sailed the Caspian, Black and Arabian seas and reached India, described the nature and life of this country.