The thalassographer’s imagination must be equally untrammelled, reconstructing ports and practices from single coins or cuneiforms, out-of-place amphorae or tersely tantalising texts. Even Homer’s storied sea was but a bay of the world’s water, a conception that harmonises with today’s ecology of oceanic interconnectedness. Deities disported there with dolphins, adventurers hazarded lives against leviathans, and invaders crossed routes with traders. This dazzlingly ambitious companion piece looks far beyond the Strait and Suez towards seaways older than those of Odysseus but less often explored.Ĭlassical cosmographers dreamed of Okeanos, an all-encompassing, intermingling great water which both islanded and united humanity, an azure immensity played across by wanderlust and winds. David Abulafia’s 2011 The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean set a standard in middle sea scholarship, charting a course from 22,000BC to today, combining careful detail with epic sweep.
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