The Story of Geographical Discovery | Page 4

the knowledge which Ptolemy records.
In the Middle Ages, much of this knowledge, like all other, was lost,
and we shall have to record how knowledge was replaced by
imagination and theory. The true inheritors of Greek science during that
period were the Arabs, and the few additions to real geographical
knowledge at that time were due to them, except in so far as
commercial travellers and pilgrims brought a more intimate knowledge
of Asia to the West.
The discovery of America forms the beginning of a new period, both in
modern history and in modern geography. In the four hundred years
that have elapsed since then, more than twice as much of the inhabited
globe has become known to civilised man than in the preceding four
thousand years. The result is that, except for a few patches of Africa,
South America, and round the Poles, man knows roughly what are the
physical resources of the world he inhabits, and, except for minor
details, the history of geographical discovery is practically at an end.

Besides its interest as a record of war and adventure, this history gives
the successive stages by which modern men have been made what they
are. The longest known countries and peoples have, on the whole, had
the deepest influence in the forming of the civilised character. Nor is
the practical utility of this study less important. The way in which the
world has been discovered determines now-a-days the world's history.
The great problems of the twentieth century will have immediate
relation to the discoveries of America, of Africa, and of Australia. In all
these problems, Englishmen will have most to say and to do, and the
history of geographical discovery is, therefore, of immediate and
immense interest to Englishmen.
[Authorities: Cooley, History of Maritime and Inland Discoveries, 3
vols., 1831; Vivien de Saint Martin, Histoire de la Géographie, 1873.]
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS
Before telling how the ancients got to know that part of the world with
which they finally became acquainted when the Roman Empire was at
its greatest extent, it is as well to get some idea of the successive stages
of their knowledge, leaving for the next chapter the story of how that
knowledge was obtained. As in most branches of organised knowledge,
it is to the Greeks that we owe our acquaintance with ancient views of
this subject. In the early stages they possibly learned something from
the Phoenicians, who were the great traders and sailors of antiquity, and
who coasted along the Mediterranean, ventured through the Straits of
Gibraltar, and traded with the British Isles, which they visited for the
tin found in Cornwall. It is even said that one of their admirals, at the
command of Necho, king of Egypt, circumnavigated Africa, for
Herodotus reports that on the homeward voyage the sun set in the sea
on the right hand. But the Phoenicians kept their geographical
knowledge to themselves as a trade secret, and the Greeks learned but
little from them.
The first glimpse that we have of the notions which the Greeks

possessed of the shape and the inhabitants of the earth is afforded by
the poems passing under the name of HOMER. These poems show an
intimate knowledge of Northern Greece and of the western coasts of
Asia Minor, some acquaintance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Sicily; but all
the rest, even of the Eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely conceived
by their author. Where he does not know he imagines, and some of his
imaginings have had a most important influence upon the progress of
geographical knowledge. Thus he conceives of the world as being a
sort of flat shield, with an extremely wide river surrounding it, known
as Ocean. The centre of this shield was at Delphi, which was regarded
as the "navel" of the inhabited world. According to Hesiod, who is but
little later than Homer, up in the far north were placed a people known
as the Hyperboreani, or those who dwelt at the back of the north wind;
whilst a corresponding place in the south was taken by the Abyssinians.
All these four conceptions had an important influence upon the views
that men had of the world up to times comparatively recent. Homer
also mentioned the pigmies as living in Africa. These were regarded as
fabulous, till they were re-discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth and Mr.
Stanley in our own time.
It is probably from the Babylonians that the Greeks obtained the idea of
an all-encircling ocean. Inhabitants of Mesopotamia would find
themselves reaching the ocean in almost any direction in which they
travelled, either the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, or the
Persian Gulf. Accordingly, the oldest map of the world which has been
found is one accompanying a cuneiform