The Enigma of the Antipodes

The concept of the spherical earth adopted by the classical geography included the division of our planet into five climatic segments that were assessed in relation to their habitation. The academics ruled out three latitudinal belts on behalf of their brutal weather conditions. However, they reckoned that the two remaining zones in the northern and southern hemispheres enjoyed the temperate climate and were fit for accommodation, even though their inhabitants would shun one another, sending no vital signs. No ship could stand a chance of crossing the uncharted ocean throughout the whole span of history. Likewise, no person could survive passing through the magic “firewall”, which was hovering over the equator and burning everybody who would dare to approach its fiery confines. Each part of the humankind would linger in the blissful ignorance of its counterpart.

In his poem “Hermes”, Eratosthenes carols this image, placing both human populations face to face and foot to foot: “standing opposite one another, between the heat and the showers of ice; both were temperate regions, growing with the grain... in them dwelt men antipodal to each other.” (3)

The idea of the phantom landmass below the tropics occurred to Crates of Mallus, a distinguished Greek scholar who flourished in the mid-second century BCE, while he was contemplating on the following verse from the “Odyssey”:

“A race divided, whom with sloping rays

The rising and descending sun surveys.”

(-Homer, Odyssey) (4)

Crates, who might have constructed the earliest known globe, realized that Homer spoke about two continents “sundered in twain” by the Torrid Zone. This climatic belt would sit astride the equator, estranging multiple inhabited worlds by the unbroken watery space. The reputation of the Greek national poet stood so high that our literary critic didn’t dare to question the source of the poet’s information. 

Strabo clarifies this hypothesis, which entails the existence of detached landmasses scattered over the face of the earth: “Crates… says that the Torrid Zone is “occupied” by Oceanus and that on both sides of this zone are the temperate zones.” (5)

The theory of plural worlds was one of the insights of classical wisdom. The Greek scientific genius could not be content with the solitary “circle of lands” in the northern hemisphere since such concept insulted the natural sense of harmony. Hellenistic scholars fancied three supplementary landmasses, forming, together with our ecumene, the four symmetrical "corners" of the round earth.

Ambrosius Macrobius, a Roman statesman and philosopher, who flourished in the early fifth century CE, sums up this image, visualizing oceanic currents that separate the people dwelling beyond the tropics and form “two islands on the upper face of the earth and two on the underside.” (6)