Torrid zone

File:Crates Terrestrial Sphere.png

The Terrestrial Sphere of Crates of Mallus (Template:Circa BCE), showing land masses in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the western hemisphere

File:World map indicating tropics and subtropics.png

Modern world map with the intertropical zone highlighted in crimson

The torrid zone was the name given by ancient Greek and Roman geographers to the equatorial area of the Earth, so hot that it was thought to be impenetrable. That notion became a deterrent for European explorers until the 15th century.

Origin

Aristotle posited that the western half of the temperate zone on the other side of the world from Greece might be habitable and that, because of symmetry, there must be in the Southern Hemisphere a temperate zone corresponding to that in the northern. He thought, however, that the excessive heat in the torrid zone would prevent the exploration.

Strabo referred to:

In 8 AD the poet Ovid wrote in his Metamorphoses.

Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the Earth had two habitable zones, a north and a south one. The second population were known as Antichthones. However, it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the equator (De orbis situ 1.4).

Proved wrong

Many Europeans had assumed that Cape Bojador, in Western Sahara, marked the beginning of the impenetrable torrid zone until 1434, when the Portuguese sailed past the cape and reported that no torrid zone existed.