Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 18

= July 18 =

Nobody south of the equator
A Christian theologian (Late Antique if I remember rightly) observed that temperatures got warmer as one went south and observed that the Bible commanded Christians to evangelise the whole world. Believing that temperatures would eventually get so hot that you couldn't survive to reach the southern temperate zone, and believing that God wouldn't have created people in a part of the world where the gospel couldn't go (since otherwise we couldn't obey the command to evangelise everyone), he concluded that the Southern Hemisphere was uninhabited. Two questions: Nyttend (talk) 00:17, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * 1) Who was this? It runs in my mind that this was St. Augustine of Hippo, but I'm not sure.
 * 2) How long did this belief persist? Did it endure until the voyages of Bartolomeu Dias proved that the South was reachable, or was it already gone by then?
 * torrid zone
 * frigid zone
 * temperate zone
 * Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 01:06, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

It was Augustine. I can find references to common medieval beliefs in both an uninhabitable southern hemisphere and something approaching reality. This book refers vaguely to a common belief around the time of Dante, and represented in his work, that there was no inhabited land in the southern hemisphere, or perhaps no land at all. Eratosthenes mentions in his work on Alexander that the King considered sailing around the southern shore of Africa, assuming it to end basically as far south as explorers had reached at the time (well before the equator). On the other hand, this book refers to ancient Greek writers Paramenides and Strabo, particularly Strabo's Geography as positing the globular Earth had cold zones in both the far north and far south, warming to a hot zone around the equator. The medieval writer Macrobius specifically rebuts Augustine in Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis.

According to this book, Augustine's proposal was that there were no "people" in the southern hemisphere, but it's not clear to me what he meant by people. The only primary source from Augustine I can find is quite vague on the subject. Another writer states that Augustine at one point argued that there could be no people on the other side of the Earth as there are no stories of disciples of Christ preaching there, and at another point argued that when Christ descends from Heaven for the second coming, people on the other side of Earth would be unable to see him and be saved, and therefore no people can be there. I can find no reference to anything about temperature.

So it sounds like it was a common Church teaching that no one lived in the southern hemisphere, and that scholars knew better the whole time. As to when proof arrived otherwise, some ancient explorers got about as far as the equator but it's not clear they went further, although some Greek works describe lands further south (see European exploration of Africa). By the time of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, centuries prior to Portuguese exploration of the whole coast of Africa, there was robust trade between Northern and Southern Africa. However, much like the silk road across Eurasia, who knows what the merchants at either end of those trade routes really knew about the origin and destination of the goods. The Arab nations may have had knowledge of the southern hemisphere through the Arab slave trade, but I have no idea whether anyone in Europe would have been aware of that information. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The centre of the world was considered to be Jerusalem - and Dante placed his mountain of Purgatory at the Antipodes of Jerusalem. There wasn't the recognition that the earth spins round its polar axis, and the equator was more about the position of the stars than about a mid-line between the poles. Hemispheres were not necessarily northern and southern. More usually, the known world (Europe, Asia and Africa) formed the land hemisphere, and the rest was sea. Wymspen (talk) 20:10, 18 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The rotation about the polar axis was well documented, to the extent that it was predicted that winter days would shorten as people travelled north, to the extent that a point would be reached when day and night lasted six months apiece. 92.8.217.19 (talk) 14:21, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

TGBOR vs. TGBOWR
From 1955 to 1998, there was a reference book annually whose cover simply said TGBOR, but which everyone called TGBOWR. Any reason for the slightly different titles?? Was there once a time when TGBOWR was what its cover actually said that people got into the habit of calling such even when its cover began to say just TGBOR with no W?? (Yes, the book still exists today, but now it's just GWR. This is just the question about the book's 20th century title.) Georgia guy (talk) 13:48, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It might help if you could tell us what the GWR stands for. Great Western Railway? Guiness World Records? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:43, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, Guinness World Records, "known from its inception in 1955 until 1998 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous U.S. editions as The Guinness Book of World Records." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:46, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The first US edition (1956) was actually called the Guinness Book of Superlatives. Wymspen (talk) 20:04, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Does anyone know the history of both titles of the book?? Georgia guy (talk) 20:29, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like it became GWR in 1998. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:59, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Remember, we're only talking about the titles TGBOR and TGBOWR. Georgia guy (talk) 21:23, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Someone else will have to weigh in, because I don't understand what your question really is. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:28, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's a picture of the 1973 US cover of the book. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The question is, how come although the book's cover said TGBOR, everyone called it TGBOWR?? Georgia guy (talk) 21:32, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't know about the British editions, but the American editions didn't literally say "TGBOWR", they said "[The] Guiness Book of World Records". The name was simplified to "Guiness World Records" in 1998 or so. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)
 * FWIW the UK edition of 1980 was called "Guiness Book of Records". Phil Holmes (talk) 08:48, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Not really complicated: The British edition was entitled "The Guinness Book of Records" while the US edition was "The Guinness Book of World Records" - somebody obviously though the Americans needed to be reminded that there were records in other parts of the world as well. There were plenty of other editions, in various languages (and still are) - http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/corporate/history Wymspen (talk) 09:30, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Or just better marketing. If the original US edition said "Superlatives" it's a wonder anyone bought the book here. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:35, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Guinness Book of Records 1999 was published in Britain on 1 September 1998.  Titled Guinness Book of World Records 1999 it was published in America in 1999.   The next edition, Guinness World Records 2000, was published in both countries in 2000. 92.8.217.19 (talk) 13:46, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * The autumn publishing date is due to the British tradition of buying a copy for a (usually male) relative as a Christmas present, when you can't think of anything else to buy them. "Almost as obligatory as a Satsuma in your stocking is a copy of the annual Guinness Book of Records". I can't imagine many people actually buying one to read themselves. Alansplodge (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I question your premise that "everyone" called it TGBOWR. No we didn't. It has always been colloquially "The Guinness Book of Records" - at least here in the UK. I think we presumed that it automatically included records from everywhere and not just the UK - and certainly not just the USA! --TammyMoet (talk) 18:43, 19 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. I'm also in the UK, and I've never heard it called "the Guinness Book of World Records". Always "the Guinness Book of Records" in my experience. Proteus (Talk) 13:24, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the words get transposed a fair amount; I'm pretty sure I've heard it referred to quite frequently as The Guinness World Book of Records. Possibly an influence from World Book, an encyclopedia for teenagers and older children?  --Trovatore (talk) 08:05, 20 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I think the words get transposed a fair amount; I'm pretty sure I've heard it referred to quite frequently as The Guinness World Book of Records. Possibly an influence from World Book, an encyclopedia for teenagers and older children?  --Trovatore (talk) 08:05, 20 July 2017 (UTC)