Although it was identifiable as a body of water 150 million years ago, the final shaping of the Mediterranean occurred some fifteen million years ago. In size, the sea is 2,965,500 square kilometers. It extends 3,733 kilometers from west to east and its width varies considerably due to the configuration of the surrounding land: the southern coast is generally smooth while the northern coast is defined by jutting peninsulas and deep bays that are seas in their own right. The configuration draws continents together at several points, but separates them in other regions. In the west, the Iberian peninsula is separated from northern Africa by the Strait of Gibraltar which, at its narrowest point, is a little more than 24 kilometers. Moving eastward, the islands of Corsica and Sardinia are separated from the mainland by the Ligurian Sea in the north and the Tyrrhenian Sea in the east that extends to the 1,046 kilometer long peninsula of Italy. The toe of Italy is narrowly separated from the Island of Sicily
A Companion to Archaic Greece Edited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-631-23045-8
Which, in turn, is roughly 160 kilometers from the north coast of Africa. The Adriatic Sea divides the Italian from the Greek peninsula while the Aegean stands between the Greek peninsula and Anatolia. A voyage of more than 885 kilometers, as the crow flies, must be undertaken to reach the coast of Africa from the Northern Aegean. Even in the more expansive eastern waters, a sailor is rarely out of sight of land, either a portion of the coastal ring of land encompassing the sea or one of the numerous islands that dot the waters of the sea (Carrington 1971: ch. 1 on physical characteristics).
The Mediterranean is connected with other bodies of water by straits in both the west and the east: the Strait of Gibraltar leads to the Atlantic Ocean and the Dardanelles provide an entrance to the Propontis and ultimately to the Black Sea. Inflow of water from these two points provides much of the replenishment of an otherwise essentially static body of water. This contained nature of the water produces a high salinity due to a greater rate of evaporation than precipitation of new water. The seafloor is deep, in most parts of the Mediterranean the water’s depth is at least 10,620 feet; in the Ionian Sea soundings have indicated a depth of twice that amount. Water temperature remains quite constant at 13 degrees centigrade throughout the year.
Since it is so tightly enclosed, the water is virtually tideless. Currents, which cause its movement, are dependent upon the inflow of water, particularly that coming through the Strait of Gibraltar which is stronger than the current from the Black Sea. The current from the Atlantic continues along the north African coast, up the coast of the Levant, and west along the southern shore of Anatolia. Moving westward, the current flows west along the Greek coast and into the Adriatic. At Sicily, the current turns north along the Italian coast, then it flows along the coasts of southern France and Spain. Smaller, local currents exist in several areas such as the eastern and western coasts of Crete and off southern France.
Prevailing winds blow from both north and south into the Mediterranean. Strongest are the two paths of Mistral which join over southern France; second in force is the Bora which reaches the Adriatic in the north-east. The Meltemi push down the Dardanelles into the Aegean in the summer months and the Scirocco winds head northward into the Mediterranean along much of the African coast. The areas experiencing the strongest force of winds are the Aegean, the northern Adriatic, and the coastal area of southern France near Marseilles. Knowing and using the winds is essential to navigation in the Mediterranean. Thus, if the Mistral was blowing, it would provide power for eastward travel and if it was strong “then it and the east-bound north African current between them would carry the ship two-thirds of the way there, almost automatically, leaving the captain with no problem in seamanship more profound than managing to dodge Sardinia and Sicily” (Hodge 1998: 27). In sailing westward, on the other hand, the task was to avoid the Mistral which, coming head-on, would impede rather than aid the journey.
The lands enclosing the great sea and the large number of islands in its midst share many features. Low-lying coast is generally limestone or earth impregnated with lime and, thus, the soil is often thin. Certain river mouths, such as the Nile, Po, and Rhone, are especially fertile. The coastal land does not extend deeply into the hinterland which is regularly separated by mountains. Toward the interior, larger expanses of land take the opposite forms of arable plains and deserts depending on the prevailing climate of the region; the Saharan climate of Africa produces more of the latter while the more temperate climate of the European region results in more arable land. In the north, extensive mountain ranges and their spurs divide the plains from one another.
Broad regional differences exist between both the east and west basins of the Mediterranean and the north and south coasts. The two basins divide at the Sicilian channel between that island and the peninsula of Cap Bon in modern Tunisia. In addition to their different configurations, the western basin is smaller in size and more temperate in climate than the eastern. Mountains extend almost to the coastline leaving a narrow strip of land by the sea in the west while they do not reach so near the shore in the east. Mountains are greater in extent and size in the northern Mediterranean lands than in the southern, a mixed blessing since in return for the valuable resources they provide they exact a regular toll in volcanoes and earthquakes. The southern Mediterranean lands, by contrast, are characterized by deserts: the Sahara desert seems endless with its 14,811,562 squares kilometers relieved only by occasional oases. This contrast identifies another difference, namely in the rainfall which is greater in the north and west than in the south and east.
Climatic and environmental conditions of lands bordering or situated in the Mediterranean are capable of sustaining life of plants, animals, and humans. Much of the land is maquis and garigue, that is, rough land that can support a combination of shrubs such as laurel, myrtle, and wild olive; undershrubs including broom, daphne, and gorse; and herbaceous plants including clovers, grasses, and asphodel. True forests exist in northern and eastern regions, from the cedars of the Levant through the mountain forests of Macedonia and the Apennines to the significant forests of southern Spain. Most dominant are varieties of oak and pine (Meiggs 1982). In addition to their fruit and timber, the forests were homes for a number of wild animals: deer, bears, wolves, lynxes, panthers, leopards, lions, and boars as well as smaller animals. Regions without great forests also had a large complement of wild animals: lions, deer and smaller animals in the north and the more exotic elephants, monkeys, hippopotami, and camels of North Africa (Rackham 2003 on the physical setting).
Some of the once-wild animals had been domesticated: elephants and camels lessened the loads collected by humans in the southern Mediterranean but far more widespread were sheep, goats, cattle, donkeys, and horses. Transhumance of flocks of sheep and goats between summer and winter pastures was a common way of life for people living in the northern and eastern lands of the sea. However, the land also supported a sedentary existence even in upland areas; Fernand Braudel, who knew and understood the Mediterranean world as well as anyone can, painted a vivid picture with his description that “every mountain [in the Mediterranean region] has some arable land, in the valleys or on the terraces cut out of the hillside” (1972: 42). Basic grain crops were wheat, barley, oats and green millet; a range of legumes; orchard fruits and nuts; grapes; and olives. In fact, the Mediterranean region can be defined as the land in which the olive grows for, as Lawrence Durrell described this hearty tree, “it seems to live without water although it responds readily to moisture and to fertilizer when available... it will stand heat to an astonishing degree and keeps the beauty of its grey-silver leaf; . . . the wood. . . can be worked and has a beautiful grain when carved and oiled. Of the fruit it is useless to speak unless it be to extol its properties” (197: 65-6).
The sea also contributed to the livelihood of humans even though its high salinity and exhaustion through its great longevity made it difficult for some species of fish to survive in its waters. Even so, a variety of marine life was present. The tunny is perhaps the most important fish; swordfish, octopus, and squid are present along with several varieties of shell fish.
The northern Mediterranean lands possessed much of the mineral wealth of the region. Copper was available in Cyprus, the Balkans, northern Italy, Sardinia, Anatolia, and southern Spain but, in the southern Mediterranean, only in the Sinai peninsula where there were also gold resources. The Northern Aegean, Attica in Greece, and the Cyclades had silver resources; there are gold resources in the northern Aegean, the eastern Black Sea, Cyprus and Spain; iron was plentiful in northern Italy and Spain; tin was rarer, although it was present in Spain, the northern Aegean, perhaps the Levant and northern Italy. Base metals occur in much of the north as well as along the western African coast and flint and obsidian, the black volcanic stone, are found in Anatolia, and the islands of Melos in the Aegean, the Lipari islands north of Sicily, and Sardinia (Lombard 1974).
Stretching between three continents where so many of the earliest developments in human history occurred, the Mediterranean experienced and supported a human presence even in the Paleolithic Age. As people learned to use its water for travel, ideas as well as humans and objects moved between the northern and southern coast and from its eastern to western extremes (Stampolidis and Karageorghis 2003). The ecological and geological diversity of the region produced a variety of cultures; however, groups of people were not greatly distanced from one another (Horden and Purcell 2000; Rackham 2003). Life for Greeks was changed in every fundamental respect by the renewed skill to course through Poseidon’s realm as the Dark Age gave way to the archaic age of revolution.
World History
