Neatorama recently highlighted what the world looked like when Jesus was born. Thanks to Strabo, the Roman geographer, we have a 17-volume description of the world as they knew it.
Here is what the world looked like to Strabo and his contemporaries: the globe was divided into five sections, with two cold bands on either end, two temperate bands, and one hot and “torrid” band at the very center. The inhabited world, a large island, was confined to a northern quarter of the globe and was surrounded by oceans. Or at least, that’s what was assumed: no one had ever circumnavigated the known world.
Strabo was pretty much correct in what was known, although that still left a lot of unknowns. In his world, Israel was a small and politically insignificant place that was nonetheless a crossroads between three continents. Read about Strabo’s view of the world at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Flickr user Paolo Porsia)
