Use the following passage to answer questions: (1) The first glimpse we have that the Greeks possessed an idea of the shape of the earth comes from the poems of Homer. These poems show an intimate knowledge of Northern Greece and of the western coasts of Asia Minor, some acquaintance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Sicily; but all the rest, even of the Eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely conceived by their author. Where he does not know he imagines, and some of his imaginings have had a most important influence upon the progress of geographical knowledge. Thus he conceives of the world as being a... Show more

Use the following passage to answer questions:

(1) The first glimpse we have that the Greeks possessed an idea of the shape of the earth comes from the poems of Homer. These poems show an intimate knowledge of Northern Greece and of the western coasts of Asia Minor, some acquaintance with Egypt, Cyprus, and Sicily; but all the rest, even of the Eastern Mediterranean, is only vaguely conceived by their author. Where he does not know he imagines, and some of his imaginings have had a most important influence upon the progress of geographical knowledge. Thus he conceives of the world as being a sort of flat shield, with an extremely wide river surrounding it, known as Ocean. The center of this shield was at Delphi, which was regarded as the 'navel' of the inhabited world. According to Hesiod, who came after Homer, up in the far north were placed a people known as the Hyperboreani, or those who dwelt at the back of the north wind; while a corresponding place in the south was taken by the Abyssinians. All these four conceptions had an important influence on the views that men had of the world. Homer also mentioned the pygmies living in Afric","These were regarded as fabulous, until they were re-discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth and Mr. Stanley in the late 19th century.
(2) It is probable that the Greeks obtained the idea of an all-encircling ocean from the Babylonians. Inhabitants of Mesopotamia would find themselves reaching the ocean in almost any direction in which they travelled—either the Caspian, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, or the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, the oldest map of the world which has been found is one with a cuneiform inscription, that represents the plain of Mesopotamia with the Euphrates flowing through it, surrounded by two concentric circles, which are named 'briny waters.' Outside these, however, are seven detached islets, possibly representing the seven zones or climates into which the world was divided according to the ideas of the Babylonians. What was roughly true of Babylonia did not in any way match the geographical position of Greece, and it is therefore probable that they obtained their ideas of the surrounding ocean from the Babylonians.
(3) It was after the period of Homer and Hesiod that the first great expansion of Greek knowledge about the world began, through extensive colonization which was carried out by the Greeks around the Eastern Mediterranean. Even to this day the natives of the southern part of Italy speak a Greek dialect, owing to the wide extent of Greek colonies in that country, which used to be called 'Magna Grecia,' or 'Great Greece.' Marseilles was also one of the Greek colonies (600 b.c.), which, in its turn, sent out other colonies along the Gulf of Lyons. In the East, too, Greek cities were dotted along the coast of the Black Sea, one of which, Byzantium, was destined to be of world-historic importance. So, too, the Greeks created colonies in North Africa, and among the islands of the Aegean Sea throughout the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., and in almost every case communication was kept up between the colonies and the mother-country.
(4) Now, the one quality which has made the Greeks so distinguished in the world's history was their curiosity; and it was natural that they should desire to know, and to put on record, the large amount of information brought to the mainland of Greece from the innumerable Greek colonies. But to record geographical knowledge, the first thing that is necessary is a map and accordingly, it is a Greek philosopher named Anaximander of Miletus, of the sixth century b.c., to whom we owe the invention of map-drawing.

— Joseph Jacobs, The Story of Geographical Discovery: How the World Became Known

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