Climate (historical geography)

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In ancient geography, a climate was a circle of latitude or a latitude zone of the earth or its inhabited part, the Oikumene . The latitudes were mostly determined on the basis of the length of the day at the summer solstice and characterized by the angle of incidence of solar radiation or typical weather conditions. They combined these characteristics with zonal models for dividing the earth into belts of latitude , which were defined by the weather conditions and habitability assigned to them and which came alongside the division into the then known continents of Europe, Asia and mostly “Libya” (roughly Africa). Climates and weather zones were used to explain natural and cultural phenomena and ideas. In Europe, in the Arab and Islamic world, they were an important element of geographic and ethnographic thought in the Middle Ages and well into modern times.

The Latin word clima , Greek κλίμα klíma , originally stood for the "inclination of the earth from the equator to the poles". After the turn of the times, clima referred to a “region of the sky, zone”, in late antiquity the typical weather conditions for a zone. The “climate” used today in German comes close to this, a “weather pattern that recurs annually for a certain area and is therefore characteristic” (→  climate ).

Ancient zoning

Zonal divisions of the earth

The five earth zones from the Somnium Scipionis of Macrobius (approx. 390 - approx. 430)

Even in pre-Socratic times , many scholars assumed that the earth was spherical. Pythagoras (around 570–495 BC) and Parmenides (around 540–470 BC) deduced their spherical shape from theoretical considerations. Parmenides laid five zones over this entire earth sphere, which were characterized by the changing angle between the incidence of solar radiation and the curved surface of the earth. He distinguished a “burned zone” in the middle, which corresponded to the Nubian desert , a temperate Mediterranean zone and a cold zone in the north, for which winter snowfall and frost were characteristic. Symmetrical to the equatorial burned zone, he suspected two other zones in the southern hemisphere, one temperate and one cold. The burned and cold zones were considered uninhabitable; In the works of later scholars who wrote in Latin, they were zona inhabitabilis .

This division into five latitudes - there were no geographical possibilities for specifying exact, linear latitudes - followed many thinkers, above all Aristotle (384–322 BC), whose opinion remained decisive for a long time. Polybius (around 200–120 BC) divided the burned zone into two sub-zones along the equator. Poseidonios (131–51 BC) introduced two further narrow sub-zones around the equator in order to distinguish the inhabited from the, according to his imagination, uninhabitable tropics due to excessive heat near the equator. As Strabon later remarked, he also connected the zones and their borders with ideas of the peoples living in them by writing of an Ethiopian, a Scytho-Celtic and the temperate zone. Some authors, including Strabo (around 63 BC - 23 AD), discussed the delimitation criteria for the zones. In addition to habitability, the shadow cast by the gnomon was used to determine two tropics on which the sun stick does not cast a shadow at midday on the summer solstice, and two arctic circles on which the sun does not set once a year.

The five-part division of the entire earth - and not just the well-known Oikumene - left room, often guided by the idea of ​​a symmetrically ordered world, to speculate about a habitable or even inhabited antecumene or antipode in the southern hemisphere, as Krates von Mallos did in the second century v. Or the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela around 44 AD did.

Climates

In the fifth century BC, names for the cardinal points according to the course of the sun had become established. The invention of the shadow stick ( gnomon ), ascribed to Anaximander (610-547 BC ), allowed the height of the sun to be measured . In connection with the anniversary and time of day of the measurement, it became possible to determine the latitude of a location. This was the basis of the idea of circles of latitude , i.e. H. of east-west-oriented parallels to the equator, which with their inclination towards the equator or the pole - i.e. their climate - had a quantitative size suitable for determining position , but also with the idea of ​​weather conditions determined by the height of the sun and thus closely related the climatic zones were connected.

The Russian science historian Dmitriy A. Shcheglov differentiates between three stages in the development of the climates concept: First, a climate was used to describe the width of an individual place, then systems of climates were designed and finally a relevant variant was established.

Greco-Roman antiquity

Reconstruction of Strabon's map of the inhabited world, who discussed the climatic teachings of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Poseidonius, with some circles of latitude (from south to north): through the Cinnamon Land and Taprobana , then through Meroe, Suene, Alexandria, Rhodes, Byzantium and finally through the Borysthenes estuary and northern tip of Britain

Eudoxus of Knidos (around 395-340 BC) was, according to Shcheglov and others, the one who introduced the concept of climate.

Eratosthenes (approx. 276–194 BC) developed a model of the inhabited part of the earth from seven latitude zones. The division of seven remained influential, in various modifications, into the Middle Ages. To determine its latitude, Eratosthenes used, among other things, measurements taken by Pytheas on his expedition in the 4th century BC. Around Britain over the Shetland Islands to Iceland or the Scandinavian Peninsula. In Eratosthenes and many other authors, first probably in Dikaiarchos (approx. 375 / 350–285 BC), there is a parallel to the equator, called a diaphragm , through the pillars of Heracles (Strait of Gibraltar), further through the Mediterranean and - depending on geographical knowledge - further eastern locations, at Eratosthenes these included Athens, Rhodes and India. The diaphragm divided the oikumene into a north and a south half.

Hipparchus (around 190–120 BC) was probably the first to use the term “climates” for the zones between parallel latitudes; he adapted Eratosthenes' model so that zones of equal width were created. As the limit of the habitable world in the north, he assumed a day length of 17 hours. Poseidonios (131–51 BC) took up this model. He found that the temperatures prevailing in the various zones were determined by solar radiation , which was dependent on the angle of incidence . According to the length of the longest day , Poseidonios linked his climatic zones with seven locations in roughly the same geographical length , from south to north:

  • I: 13 hours, Meroe , an island in the Nile in the middle of what is now Sudan
  • II: 13.5 hours, Suene ( Aswan ), southern Egypt
  • III: 14 hours, Alexandria , Northern Egypt
  • IV: 14.5 hours, Rhodes , in the Mediterranean
  • V: 15 hours, Hellespont (Dardanelles)
  • VI: 15.5 hours, Mesupontu, the middle of the Black Sea
  • VII: 16 hours, Borysthene, the mouth of the Dnieper into the Black Sea

The limits of the inhabited world were, according to Poseidonios, in the south the Cinnamon Land, on the Horn of Africa , with 12.5 hours and in the north Thule with 20 hours of sunshine at the summer solstice.

Claudius Ptolemy (around 100–160 AD) wanted, building on the work of Marinos of Tire (around 110 AD), to create the basis on the basis of solid astronomical principles with which maps of the known world could be created in the future. In his Geographike Hyphegesis he drew 21 parallels between the equator and Thule and another south of the equator. According to Ptolemy, the inhabited world was between the fourth and twenty-first parallel, between Meroe and “Thule” (roughly at the level of the Shetland Islands). He provided the parallel parallels with information about the length of the longest day, the degree of latitude and - as far as Ptolemy located the latitudes in the inhabited world - one of seven climatic zones, which he, like Poseidonius, he, in half-hour steps between 13 and 17 hours of the day at the solstice defined. Ptolemy assumed that similar weather conditions prevailed on the same parallel, and he was convinced that animals and plants in a parallel were similar. Ptolemy's map base and his information on the climates were taken up during the Renaissance , in the 15th and 16th centuries, and were considered authoritative.

The Carthaginian writer Martianus Capella (probably in the 5th century AD) added an eighth northern climatic zone to the seven climatic zones around Riphee , a mountain range that could not be more precisely located, which in ancient times marked the northern edge of the inhabited world.

Arab and Islamic world since late antiquity

World map of al-Idrisi (1154 AD, south is above), the parallels are semicircular from a little above the center of the map downwards

The ancient climates can also be found in writings from the late ancient Syrian and Arab countries. Theon , an astronomer living in the then Eastern Roman Alexandria in the 4th century , added a zone running through Byzantium . The Syrian scholar Jakob von Edessa (approx. 633-708) gave the day length at the summer solstice on Thule , in the northern, mythological Ocean , as 20 hours, further north there would be uninhabited land with a harsh climate and a day length of up to 23 hours.

Widespread research assumes that the theory of climates found its way into the Islamic world through the writings of Ptolemy. In the Arab and Islamic geography the representation of the seven climates was widespread. The chorzmic scholars al-Khwarizmi , who worked in Baghdad around 820 , and al-Biruni (973-1048) assigned the climates to places more easterly, for example in the case of al-Biruni: in the II. Climate of Mahra and Saba in the south of the Arabian Peninsula , in the III. Climate Tanga, in the IV. Climate Adarbaigan ( Atropatene , today in about East Azerbaijan ), in the V. a. Samarkand and Bukhara and in the VI. Climate at-Tuguzguz. Probably the best-known Arab geographer, al-Idrisi , showed Ptolemy's seven climates on his map of the world from 1154. In the geographic dictionary of the geographer Yāqūt ar-Rūmī , which was published around 1229, the aqālīm are latitudes based on the length of the longest day along the surface of the earth. They would show the distance of a place from the sun and hence its relative cold or heat. Also ar-Rūmī considered the division of the inhabited world into seven zones along half-hourly steps (with him from 12.5 to 16.5 hours) to be the most reasonable.

European Middle Ages and Modern Times

With the translation of Ptolemy's Geographics into Latin, which was completed at the beginning of the 15th century , the doctrine of climates he presented was widely received in Europe in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance , for example in the Behaim globe created at the end of the 15th century , the oldest surviving globe. Martin Behaim believed in an astrological meaning of climates, he said among other things:

"The planet moon rules the seventh clima. Her house is the crab. The people of this climate are inconsistent, somnabulist. The longest day is 16 hours long "

“The planet moon rules the seventh climate. Its home is cancer . The people of this climate are fickle sleepwalkers. The longest day has 16 hours. "

Map of the world from the Atlas Maior, 1662–1665, with zona frigida , temperata and torrida , each in the northern and southern hemisphere

As other regions became known, especially in southern Africa, new climates were gradually added.

From the middle of the 16th century it gradually became customary to express latitudes in degrees . In order to nevertheless give an impression of the typical weather conditions in their opinion, many cartographers switched to depicting the five climatic zones of the classical ancient zoning theory. On maps that included the New World , which became known since Columbus' first voyage in 1492 , these zones were extended to North and South America. One example is the Atlas Maior by the Dutch cartographers Willem and Joan Blaeu from the second half of the 17th century.

Via the botany of the 19th century and the vegetation groups of de Candolles , the idea of ​​five climatic zones found its way into the main classes of the Köppen-Geiger classification of the 20th century, which is still widespread today .

Ethnographic ideas

From antiquity to modern times, climates and latitudes were associated not only with ideas of the peculiarities of the plants and animals living in them, but also of the people who inhabit them.

An example of ancient reports on cultural differences is the Roman architect Vitruvius , who noted in his De Architectura (in the 1st century BC) that building types depend on the weather conditions of the geographical latitude. In particular, however, scholars of the time dealt with the presumed connections between latitude, weather and other natural conditions and physiognomic and character properties of the people living there and their health. These theories, especially in ancient Greece, were shaped by the supposed opposition between Hellenes and barbarians .

In the work De aere aquis et locis , attributed to Hippocrates (approx. 460-370 BC), there are three climatic zones, which he combined with ethnographic speculations: a particularly favorable middle one with Greece and Asia Minor, a northern one in which the Scythians lived , and a southern one that included Egypt and Libya. Physical and character traits of people are seen in the work as largely determined by the weather conditions and times of sunshine prevailing in these zones (→  climate determinism ). Aristotle attributed to the peoples of the cold north being wild, courageous, but also stupid and lacking artistry; the peoples of Asia, in the southeast, were powerless but intelligent and artistically gifted, the Greeks had a share in both characters, were energetic and intelligent. These theories were repeatedly taken up and modified, including in the Naturalis historia of Pliny the Elder (approx. 23-79 AD) or by the doctor Galen who worked in Rome (around 130 - approx. 200 AD) . The work of the war theorist Vegetius (late 4th century) was still very much appreciated in the Middle Ages; In it he said that peoples who live near the sun are wiser, but lack bravery, those of the north are braver and therefore better suited for war, but impetuous and not particularly intelligent, the inhabitants of the well-tempered central zone dispose of just the right amount of bravery and wisdom and are ideally deployable in the army.

Islamic scholars followed the ancient humoral pathology . They believed that excess heat or cold would upset the balance of humors and adversely affect appearance, behavior, habits, and thinking. In temperate regions - from their point of view those in the central fourth climate - on the other hand, the appearance and skills of the people would be promoted. Views as to which cities and regions were in the fourth and most beneficial climate varied depending on the author, ranging from Samarkand to North Africa.

The idea of ​​a determination of something like a folk character through climatic zones remained powerful until modern times, with its representatives tending to shift the boundaries of the zone, which should be associated with optimal character traits, towards their center of life.

literature

  • Ludwig Hempel: Climate . In: Holger Sonnabend (Hrsg.): Humans and landscapes in antiquity: Lexicon of historical geography . Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-00218-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Ludwig Hempel : Climate . In: Holger Sonnabend (Hrsg.): Humans and landscapes in antiquity: Lexicon of historical geography . Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-00218-1 .
  2. ^ Ernst Zinner : German and Dutch astronomical instruments of the 11th to 18th centuries ; Beck, Munich 1956. p. 94 as an example for the synonymous use of climate and latitude belt
  3. ↑ James Romm: Continents, Climates, and Cultures: Greek Theories of Global Structures . In: Kurt A. Raaflaub, Richard JA Talbert (Ed.): Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (=  Ancient World: Comparative Histories ). John Wiley & Sons, 2012, ISBN 978-1-118-58984-7 .
  4. ↑ Climate. In: Etymological Dictionary of German (1993). Wolfgang Pfeifer u. a., accessed on April 26, 2020 (digitized version revised by Wolfgang Pfeifer in the digital dictionary of the German language).
  5. ^ A b Daniela Dueck: Geography in the ancient world . Phillip von Zabern, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8053-4610-8 , Chapter III: Scientific geography - 1. Shapes and sizes.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Daniela Dueck: Geography in the ancient world . Phillip von Zabern, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8053-4610-8 , Chapter III: Scientific geography - 2. The theory of climatic zones and ethno-geography.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Marie Sanderson: The Classification of Climates from Pythagoras to Koeppen . In: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society . April 1999, doi : 10.1175 / 1520-0477 (1999) 080 <0669: TCOCFP> 2.0.CO; 2 (open access).
  8. ^ Alfred Hiatt: The Map of Macrobius before 1100 . In: Imago Mundi . tape 59 , no. 2 , 2007, doi : 10.1080 / 03085690701300626 .
  9. ↑ Eckart von Olshausen: Earth surveying . In: Holger Sonnabend (Hrsg.): Humans and landscapes in antiquity: Lexicon of historical geography . Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-00218-1 .
  10. ^ Strabo: The Geography of Strabo . With an English Translation by Horace Leonard Jones, AM, PH. D. In: Geography Of Strabo (=  Loeb Classical Library . Volume 049 ). tape 1 . Harvard University Press, 1917, 2.3.1 ( archive.org ).
  11. ↑ a b c d e Daniela Dueck: Geography in the ancient world . Phillip von Zabern, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8053-4610-8 , Chapter III: Scientific geography - 3. The localization of coordinates.
  12. ↑ a b c Dmitriy A. Shcheglov: Ptolemy's system of seven climata and Eratosthenes' geography . In: Geographia Antiqua . tape XIII , 2004, p. 21-37 .
  13. ↑ a b Ernst Honigmann : The seven climates and the Πόλεις Ἐπίσημοι. An investigation into the history of geography and astrology in ancient times and the Middle Ages . with the support of the Emergency Association of German Science and the Research Institute for the History of Natural Sciences. Carl Winter's University Bookstore, Heidelberg 1929.
  14. ↑ See Strabo: The Geography of Strabo . With an English Translation by Horace Leonard Jones, AM, PH. D. In: Geography Of Strabo (=  Loeb Classical Library . Volume 049 ). tape 1 . Harvard University Press, 1917, Frontispiece and Chapter 2.5 ( archive.org ).
  15. ↑ a b For the route of Pytheas see also: Raimund Schulz : Adventurers of the Distance - The great voyages of discovery and the knowledge of the world of antiquity . Klett-Cotta, 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94846-2 , IV.2 The advance into the north-western Ocean.
  16. ^ 9. The Growth of an Empirical Cartography in Hellenistic Greece . Prepared by the editors from materials supplied by Germaine Aujac. In: JB Harley, David Woodward (eds.): Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean (=  The History of Cartography . Volume 1 ). 1987, ISBN 978-0-226-31633-8 .
  17. ↑ Raimund Schulz : Adventurers from afar - The great voyages of discovery and the knowledge of the world in antiquity . Klett-Cotta, 2016, ISBN 978-3-608-94846-2 , Alexandria and the new image of the earth by Eratosthenes, p. 299-301 .
  18. ↑ Ptolemy left out the duration of the day 16–16.5 hours, see Sanderson (1999), p. 670.
  19. ↑ a b c d J. T. Olsson: The world in Arab eyes: A reassessment of the climes in medieval Islamic scholarship . In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies . tape 77 , no. October 3 , 2014, doi : 10.1017 / S0041977X14000512 .
  20. ↑ Quoted from Sanderson (1999) / Ravenstein (1908)
  21. ^ Hippocrates: On Airs, Waters, and Places. Retrieved April 19, 2020 .
  22. ↑ a b Waldemar Zacharasiewicz: The climate theory in English literature and literary criticism from the middle of the 16th to the early 18th century . Ed .: FK Stanzel. Wilhelm Braumüller University Publishing House, Vienna, Stuttgart 1977, Chapter 1, p. 17-33 .