Krates Globe

Globe of Krates in the presentation of the anonymous author of the Encyclopedia Britannica of the 1911 edition

The Krates Globe is supposedly the first earth globe . Made about 150 BC. e. (according to other sources, about 168-165 BC. ^[1] ) Cratetus (Krathes) Mullski , who lived in Pergamum .

The model itself has not reached our days. The globe is mentioned very briefly by Strabo and Gemin . Strabo observes that for a detailed and clear image of the Oikumena (inhabited land) it is necessary that the globe be 10 feet. in diameter. Whether he was referring to the Krathesian Pergamon globe, or whether he reasoned only theoretically, is unknown. Gemin reports that Krates equipped his globe with a system of circles and placed the ocean between the tropics. From some indications of Strabo and from Macrobius 's remarks about the oceans, it can be assumed that the main equatorial ocean was depicted on the Krates Globe, from which two meridional oceans emanated, which divided the land into four parts.

From modern perspectives, it is difficult to call this model a real globe, since it was rather a theoretical model of the Earth’s surface, taking into account the outlines of continents and oceans known to Europeans at that time. However, its significance is great, since it shows that already in ancient times, assumptions were made about the sphericity of planet Earth. And although in the Middle Ages Europeans again turned to the notion of a flat Earth , a simplified model of the Krates Orb with intersecting stripes of the oceans or with one equatorial and half meridional circle became an emblem of power over the world ( power ) of the Roman and Byzantine emperors, and after it became a regalia and others European monarchs. Before the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, this ball was crowned with a figure of the goddess of victory, and after that with a cross.

In the late Middle Ages this fourth (hypothetical) division of land reappears in the works of European scientists and is derived as a theoretical justification for the existence of the Unknown Southern Land .