Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Cultural geographies
Veronica della Dora and Theano S. Terkenli
7.1 Introduction
Geology explains the overabundance of mountains across the solid space of the
Mediterranean. Recent, high, and craggy mountains; mountains which, like a
stony skeleton, pierce the skin of the Mediterranean territory: the Alps, the Apen-
nines, the Balkans, Taurus, Lebanon, Atlas, Spain's mountain ranges, the Pyre-
nees - what a parade! Steep snow-capped peaks, towering above the sea and
above planes where roses and orange trees blossom; abrupt promontories which
often terminate in the water: these are landscapes we find almost interchangeably
from one shore of the Mediterranean to the other.
Braudel (2000, pp. 14-15)
The Mediterranean, it has been argued, 'is not so much the sea between the lands, as
the name asserts, but the sea among the mountains' (McNeill, 1992, p. 12). Sailing
around the Mediterranean Basin (except for part of the North African coast), one is
practically almost never out of sight of a range or peak. Fernand Braudel famously
narrated Mediterranean mountains in terms of continuity: from above, as an ensem-
ble of ranges that bound the watery continent for most of its perimeter; from the
ground, or sea level, as 'interchangeable' landforms framed by an iconic landscape
of water, roses and orange trees. However, it is not until the age of steam that sailors
would have ventured directly from one side of the Basin to the other. The Mediter-
ranean of antiquity was not a single homogeneous watery continent diametrically
criss-crossed by merchant routes, but rather a mosaic of ecological 'microregions'
connected through
cabotage
, or coastwise navigation (Horden and Purcell, 2001).
The open sea's flat horizon was feared. Coastal landmarks, especially promonto-
ries and lofty mountain peaks, by contrast, were deemed reassuring reference points
for sailors. Indeed, outbound travellers would often be able to discern the faint sil-
houette of distant lands looming on their visual horizon even before leaving their
port. The mountains of Epirus were visible to sailors from the Italian shore across
the straits of Otranto. The snow-capped peaks of Sierra Nevada on the southern
