Atlantis — Birth and Death of Science : loi 



struggle, but Caesar notes that these ships were apparently superior 

 sailing vessels. He says that when they turned in the direction of the 

 wind they were able to outdistance the Roman ships and escape. As 

 Corson has recently suggested, this seems to indicate that the north 

 European sailors had already, at the beginning o£ the Christian Era, 

 learned how to build a ship that could be sailed to windward. 



The Roman civilization that Caesar established in England was 

 later cut off from its home in the Mediterranean when the Goths 

 and the other northern European tribes moved southward, and this 

 suggests the extent to which the Romans were dependent on over- 

 land transport. With the coming of the northern hordes, the geo- 

 graphic knowledge and the use of the sea that had been a part of the 

 classic tradition lapsed and died. The Goths swept southward into 

 Europe in 378 succeeded by the Visigoths in 395. At the same time 

 the Huns came into the Mediterranean area by way of Asia Minor. 

 In 406 the Vandals crossed the Rhine into Gaul, made their way 

 through Spain and into North Africa, coming around to attack Rome 

 through Sicily and the Mediterranean islands. Wave after wave of 

 northern barbarians disposed of what was left of Mediterranean civi- 

 lizations. The Gothic woe had descended on Europe. 



After the fall of Rome the growth of the Christian Church made 

 possible the preservation of some of the traditions and records of clas- 

 sic learning. Scholarship found a certain refuge in the monasteries 

 and cloisters but even this was of dubious value. In its struggle for 

 survival and expansion the Christian Church often insisted on the- 

 ology rather than science being made the test of geographic knowl- 

 edge. Ptolemy and Aristotle represented all that was left of classic 

 geography and in time even their teachings were distrusted and al- 

 tered. Medieval maps give us a vivid impression of this flat and 

 shrunken world. Jerusalem becomes the center of the known world. 

 Strange characters and demons appear on the fringes of the land and 

 the oceans in one quarter of the map, while elsewhere there will be a 

 representation of Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden. 



What happened to geographic knowledge is perhaps well illustrated 

 in the work of Cosmas who, in the middle of the sixth century pro- 

 duced a work under the title Christian Typography. In his youth 

 Cosmas is supposed to have traveled extensively and thus earned the 

 title "Indicopleustes" meaning the traveler who had been to India. 

 When he became a monk Cosmas produced his work and denounced 

 and condemned the idea of a circular world. He insisted that the 

 world was flat and oblong. The sun did not travel around the world; 



