(September 30, 2012 at 5:32 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Here's an odd thing I picked up from St. Augustine. It's in Book XVI, Chapter 9 of "The City of God."
Apparently, the people in the middle ages believed that the heat at the Equator was so unbearable, and couldn't believe that it didn't get hotter. Therefore, they believed that the lands below the equator were virtually uninhabitable. This was believed right up until the days of Columbus, although, of course, it was only a minority position by that point. That said, in 748 AD, Pope Zachary declared belief in the antipodes heretical.
things like these just boil my brain. i do understand why copernicus for example was throwned upon, because afterall for the everyday fool when he observes the sky and has no interest in questioning anything, he or she might believe that the sun goes around the earth.
but that places south of the equator are inhabitable? that a chilld from a black mother and white father would be like a dalmatian?
these are things wich are not eaven in need of much observation.
various arab tribes have been kidnaping people from as far away as madagasca during the medieval era - and one can at least assume that that "knowlege" - that people lived south of the equator must have made it to europe.
and it is eaven harder to believe that for 1000 years no black person had a child with a white person.
