Mediterranean in the context of "Aframax"

Play Trivia Questions online!

or

Skip to study material about Mediterranean in the context of "Aframax"

Ad spacer

⭐ Core Definition: Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈrniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is an intercontinental sea situated between Europe, Asia, and Africa. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Europe, and on the south by North Africa. To its west it is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Gibraltar that separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa by only 14 km (9 mi); additionally, it is connected to the Black Sea through the Bosporus strait that intersects Turkey in the northeast and the Red Sea via the Suez Canal in the southeast.

The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about 2,500,000 km (970,000 sq mi), representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface; it includes fifteen marginal seas, including the Aegean, Adriatic, Tyrrhenian, and Marmara. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

↓ Menu

>>>PUT SHARE BUTTONS HERE<<<
In this Dossier

Mediterranean in the context of Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, romanizedHellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt, was annexed by the Roman Republic.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Greek mathematics

Ancient Greek mathematics refers to the history of mathematical ideas and texts in Ancient Greece during classical and late antiquity, mostly from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread around the shores of the ancient Mediterranean, from Anatolia to Italy and North Africa, but were united by Greek culture and the Greek language. The development of mathematics as a theoretical discipline and the use of deductive reasoning in proofs is an important difference between Greek mathematics and those of preceding civilizations.

The early history of Greek mathematics is obscure, and traditional narratives of mathematical theorems found before the fifth century BC are regarded as later inventions. It is now generally accepted that treatises of deductive mathematics written in Greek began circulating around the mid-fifth century BC, but the earliest complete work on the subject is Euclid's Elements, written during the Hellenistic period. The works of renown mathematicians Archimedes and Apollonius, as well as of the astronomer Hipparchus, also belong to this period. In the Imperial Roman era, Ptolemy used trigonometry to determine the positions of stars in the sky, while Nicomachus and other ancient philosophers revived ancient number theory and harmonics. During late antiquity, Pappus of Alexandria wrote his Collection, summarizing the work of his predecessors, while Diophantus' Arithmetica dealt with the solution of arithmetic problems by way of pre-modern algebra. Later authors such as Theon of Alexandria, his daughter Hypatia, and Eutocius of Ascalon wrote commentaries on the authors making up the ancient Greek mathematical corpus.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Geography of the European Union

The geography of the European Union describes the geographic features of the European Union (EU), a multinational polity that occupies a large portion of Europe and covers 4,225,104 km (1,631,322 sq mi). Its European territory extends northeast to Finland, northwest to Ireland, southeast to Cyprus in Asia and southwest to the Spanish exclaves on the Mediterranean shores of North Africa. Additionally, the EU includes numerous islands around the world, and French Guiana in South America.

Collectively, it represents the seventh largest territory in the world by area. Including all overseas territories, the EU shares borders with 20 countries.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Mycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. The most prominent site was Mycenae, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and on Cyprus, while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant and Italy.

The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, Linear B, offers the first written records of the Greek language, and their religion already included several deities also to be found in the Olympic pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace-centered states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social, and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as a wanax.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Delos

Delos or Dilos (/ˈdlɒs/; Greek: Δήλος [ˈðilos]; Attic Greek: Δῆλος Dêlos, Doric Greek: Δᾶλος Dâlos), is a small Greek island near Mykonos, close to the centre of the Cyclades archipelago. Though only 3.43 km (1.32 sq mi) in area, it is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. The ongoing excavations in the island are among the most extensive in the Mediterranean, and many of the artifacts found are displayed at the Archaeological Museum of Delos and the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

Delos had a position as a holy sanctuary for a millennium before Olympian Greek mythology made it the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. From its Sacred Harbour are visible the three conical mounds that have identified landscapes sacred to a goddess (presumably Athena). Another site, retaining its Pre-Greek name Mount Cynthus, is crowned with a sanctuary of Zeus.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Sarandë

Sarandë (Albanian: [saˈɾandə]; Albanian definite form: Saranda; Greek: Άγιοι Σαράντα) is a city in Albania and the seat of Sarandë Municipality. Geographically, the city is located on an open sea gulf of the Ionian Sea within the Mediterranean Sea. Stretching along the Albanian Ionian Sea Coast, Sarandë has a Mediterranean climate with over 300 sunny days a year.

In ancient times, the city was known as Onchesmus or Onchesmos, and was a port-town of Chaonia in ancient Epirus. It owes its modern name to the nearby Byzantine monastery of the Forty Saints by which it became known from the High Middle Ages. Sarandë today is known for its deep blue Mediterranean waters. Near Sarandë are the remains of the ancient city of Butrint, a UNESCO World Heritage site. In recent years, Sarandë has seen a steady increase in tourists, many of them coming by cruise ships. Visitors are attracted by the natural environment of Sarandë and its archaeological sites. Sarandë is inhabited by a majority of ethnic Albanians, and also has a minority Greek community and as such has been considered one of the two centers of the Greek minority in Albania.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Zanclean flood

The Zanclean flood or Zanclean deluge is theorized to have refilled the Mediterranean Sea 5.33 million years ago.This flooding ended the Messinian salinity crisis and reconnected the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, although it is possible that even before the flood there were partial connections to the Atlantic Ocean. The re-connection marks the beginning of the Zanclean age, the name given to the earliest age on the geologic time scale of the Pliocene.

According to this model, water from the Atlantic Ocean refilled the dried-up basin through the modern-day Strait of Gibraltar. Ninety percent of the Mediterranean Basin flooding occurred abruptly during a period estimated to have been between several months and two years, following low water discharges that could have lasted for several thousand years. Sea level rise in the basin may at times have reached rates greater than 10 metres per day (5 fathom/d; 30 ft/d). Based on the erosion features preserved until modern times under the Pliocene sediment, Garcia-Castellanos et al. estimate that water rushed down a drop of more than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) with a maximum discharge of about 100 million cubic metres per second (3.5 billion cubic feet per second), three orders of magnitude larger than the present-day Amazon River. Studies of the underground structures at the Strait of Gibraltar show that the flooding channel descended gradually toward the bottom of the basin rather than forming a steep waterfall.

↑ Return to Menu

Mediterranean in the context of Akrotiri and Dhekelia

Akrotiri and Dhekelia (/ˌækrˈtɪəri ənd diˈkliə/), officially the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (SBA), is a British Overseas Territory that consists of two separate areas on the island of Cyprus. The areas, which include British military bases and installations that were formerly part of the Crown colony of Cyprus, were retained by the British under the 1960 treaty of independence signed by the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, the President of Cyprus and the representative of the Turkish Cypriot community. The territory serves as a station for signals intelligence and is thereby part of the United Kingdom's surveillance-gathering work in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Despite being under British control, Akrotiri and Dhekelia are integrated with the surrounding Cypriot communities and economies. The areas are notable for their strategic geopolitical value and rich environmental features, including the Akrotiri Salt Lake, a protected wetland. Education, policing, and healthcare services are provided in coordination with the Republic of Cyprus. The SBAs also play a significant role in intelligence and communications operations across the Eastern Mediterranean. Although not part of the European Union post-Brexit, the areas continue to be governed by protocols that align with certain EU laws to avoid disrupting the daily lives of residents.

↑ Return to Menu