Ancient Greek Philosophers: Antarctica

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To start this paragraph I will ask you a question. Can you remember back to 530 B.C.? The time Pythagoras discovered that the Earth had two poles? Of course not, we weren’t alive! Well anyway...

Significantly, Ancient Greek Philosophers, after many years of believing Earth was two dimensional, discovered that it actually wasn’t. Earth was proven to be three dimensional; a round sphere.

Pythagoras was one of the first philosophers to create the idea that Earth had a north pole and a south pole. His theories were proven to be true.

As intellectually erudite the Greek seemed, they did believe Earth was circled with a fiery ring, also known as our equator. Crazy right?

Furthermore, the Ancient Greeks had a crazy belief that what we know as the equator, was actually a ring of fire, where the further south you traveled the warmer the weather would become. How would this explain Antarctica’s dry ice and chilling climate? …show more content…

In addition to this, Philosophers called Antarctica Terra Australis. This term meaning “Unknown Southern Land”. Being as Antarctica was unknown for a very long time, I don’t think anyone truly knows the reason the ice sheets formed over the sandy beaches, or why its wildlife became so scarce due to drastic weather conditions. Since Earth had a north pole, it was believed that, of course, we had to have a south pole as well. Furthermore, Antarctica was labeled as the farthest continent south. If you didn’t already know, Antarctica got this as its name because Antarctic is opposite the Arctic, referring to the opposite locations of the north and south

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