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0417 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 417 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
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Strabo, A. D. 20, furnishes evidence more exact than that
of Pomponius and Pliny. He gives data as to the distance
from the mouth of the Phasis River in the Black Sea to that
of the Cyrus in the Caspian, as to the sandy plain on the
west coast of the Caspian, and as to other features. His
figures agree in indicating that at that time the sea stood
higher than now. From them Khanikof has estimated that
in the first century of our era the level of the Caspian Sea
was eighty-five feet higher than now. If this is true, the
Scythian gulf must have extended far toward the Sea of
Aral, with which, at an earlier, higher stage, it may almost
have coalesced.

The last ancient author who makes any important con-
tribution to our knowledge of the Caspian Sea is Ptolemy,
A. D. 160, one of the most accurate among Greek geogra-
phers. He abandoned the Alexandrine idea of a northern
outlet, and asserted that the sea was completely enclosed.
His map makes it over twice as long from east to west as
from north to south. Apparently, when he became con-
vinced that the sea was not connected with the northern
ocean, he supposed the so-called Caspian gulf to be also a
mistake, and accordingly made the sea consist of only the
Hyrcanian and Scythian gulfs.

Most of the information of the preceding paragraphs has
been gleaned from Humboldt's great book, "Asie Centrale."
In dealing with records of ancient authors, two mental atti-
tudes are possible. One, exemplified by Murchison in his
paper on the Caspian, assumes that the ancients were essen-
tially wrong, and that their geographical accounts are worth
studying only as literature. The other, exemplified by Hum-