The geological key to the Mediterranean civilisation
is a mid-world
ocean which once separated the two supercontinents of Laurasia and
Gondwana. Along much of the southern fringe of Eurasia this ocean has
disappeared. The various fragments of Gondwana have either linked with
Eurasia or drifted away. But there is one major exception to this
pattern, namely the region bounded by the western third of Eurasia to
the north and by Africa to the south. Here a basin of the old mid-world
ocean has been preserved. The eastern and western regions of the Old
World are thus in sharp contrast. In the east the central geographical
feature is the massive Tibetan plateau, in the west it is the
Mediterranean Sea.
This account of the Mediterranean as a survival from
an earlier epoch
is a simplification. Eurasia and Africa have not been static since the
opening of the mid-world ocean. What we now confront is the outcome of
a complex asymetric geological development. In some places continental
crust has collapsed; in others fragments of it have been scattered
through the sea as islands or peninsulas. Collisional effects have led
to much mountain building in geologically recent times, and high
Holocene sea levels have made further changes to the global map.
On the northern shores of the Mediterranean are four
major peninsulas:
Spain, Italy, Greece, and Anatolia. Italy and Greece are entirely
contained within the Mediterranean, whereas Spain and Anatolia enjoy
peninsular status by virtue of other adjoining bodies of water: in the
case of Spain the Atlantic Ocean, and in the case of Anatolia the Black
Sea. All four peninsulas are mountainous, but Spain and Anatolia are
distinguished from the others by their possession of large interior
plateaus. The southern shore, by contrast, lacks comparable peninsulas,
and while it is mountainous in the west, most of it is rather flat.
Because of the east—west orientation of the Mediterranean,
it is
climatically rather homogeneous; the overall pattern is hot, dry
summers and mild, wet—though not very wet—winters. But the winter
rainfall is unevenly distributed. Because of the location of the
mountains the north has more rainfall than the south, and the southwest
is better served than the southeast. The only large river is the Nile.
As far as human settlement is concerned, on land there
was nothing
outside Egypt to compare with the great river valleys of the Near East,
India, and China; Mediterranean agriculture was accordingly practiced
on small, scattered plains, or failing that in the hills. Movement was
difficult by land but relatively easy by sea. The presence of humans on
a few of the islands in Mesolithic times shows that even before the
onset of the Neolithic some kind of seafaring had developed. Once
seaworthy ships came into use, the existence of the Mediterranean made
possible a small interconnected world (like "frogs around a pool," as
Plato put it). The shared environmental conditions of this world meant
that what worked well in one part of it was also likely to work well in
another.
To the east, by contrast, it was much harder to circumvent
the Tibetan
plateau or cope with the vastness of the Indian Ocean, and geographical
conditions along the way were far more varied.
Despite the relative homogeneity of the Mediterranean
world, it was
significant for its history that the north tended to be more favored
than the south. Egypt apart, the distribution of rainfall meant that
the agricultural resources of the northern shore were in general
better, or less bad, than those of the southern shore. The north was
also better endowed from a maritime point of view: its coastline was
more indented and thus more friendly to ship borne adventurers. Its
rainfall provided more timber to build ships. On this latter score
Egypt shared fully in the disadvantage of the south.
