Surprisingly Complex

It’s where the difficulty of the task is inversely proportional to the simplistic allure of its name.

Take Bodyflow with Kayla. It sounds like the sort of introductory yoga class that should leave your mind and body in supple harmony. The reality of not being able to sit upright in a chair because you've worked your core so hard it can no longer support your upper body is quite different.

People should know the names of the oceans. This is something we should teach in schools.

Deceptively simple. Surprisingly complex.

Join me on a tour of the hinterland surrounding the names of the oceans and you can decide which side of the knife it falls; valid, useful, and engaging, or needless, bloated, and best ignored.

Ancient Greece

We start where the word Geography started. Over 2000 years ago, when Eratosthenes first wrote down the word Geography. Eratosthenes was the chief librarian in the Great Library of Alexandria. This places him firmly in Egypt, back then, a part of the Greek Empire.

We start our journey by ignoring all the oceans and, instead, looking at a sea. The Mediterranean. Finding Greece on a map, we find it on the other side of the Mediterranean to Egypt. Ancient Greece, an empire that spanned the water. The water between two lands. Medi, as in middle. Terra, as in land. Nean, as in having the nature of. The Mediterranean is, quite simply, the sea in the middle of the land. Knowing Eratosthenes to be in Egypt, but part of the Greek Empire, gives us an insight into the thinking, it helps us to understand the process of naming.

It also gives us a pretty significant issue. Terra is Latin, and we're talking about Greeks. There is no way that Eratosthenes would have ever called it the Mediterranean Sea; leaving us a circle that won't square.

Nonetheless, Eratosthenes, and empires across the water help us to understand the name of the Mediterranean. It offers context to a word that could so easily remain meaningless to us. 

Sticking with the Greeks, we need to know something of mythology and the war between the Titans and Olympians. Zeus led his siblings in a battle of the gods against an earlier generation of Greek deities, the Titans. Outmatched, the Olympians should have lost, but Zeus succeeded in imprisoning the Titans in Tartarus.

Atlas, a leader of the Titans during the Titanomachy, evaded imprisonment in Tartarus. Instead, Atlas was punished by Zeus to forever hold up the celestial spheres in the Westernmost point of the Earth. We can think of the celestial spheres as an early explanation for the orbital paths of planets. Thinking of celestial spheres in this way also smooths over stories of Atlas holding up the sky. As for holding up the Earth, this can be a valuable time to explain what a misconception is; for bonus points, you could add how the Farnese Atlas exacerbates this misconception.

Thinking of Atlas being punished to stand in the westernmost point of the Earth, we can turn our eyes back to a map of the Mediterranean Sea. There, at its Western end, are the Atlas Mountains. Quite literally, the mountains of Atlas. West again, and we reach the Atlantic Sea, the Sea of Atlas. To the people of ancient Greece, this was the westernmost point of the Earth. The furthest the Ancient Greeks travelled West. This is where Atlas would have been punished to stand, watching over the waters of the Mediterranean Sea drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Just like that, we've opened the door to clarify the difference between the seas and the oceans.

The Golden Age of Islamic science

From a European perspective, the Indian Ocean doesn't make much of an appearance until the Age of Discovery and the actions of the Dutch and British East India companies. However, while Europe was in a dark age, the shining light of Geography and Cartography was being carried by the Islamic Empire. Ibn Batuta, a Muslim and North African, from what would now be Morocco, set forth on a great journey. Approaching his death bed, he dictated the Tuhfat an-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ib al-Amsar wa ‘Aja’ib al-Asfar (تحفة النظار في غرائب الأمصار وعجائب الأسفار). It translates beautifully into English as "A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling". The Indian Ocean is a recurring character as Ibn Batuta travelled much of the Silk Road, the interwoven trade routes that connected the East of China with the West of Europe.

Ahmad ibn Majid, the Lion of the Sea, was born in what would now be the United Arab Emirates, descended from a family famous for seafaring. The Lion of the Sea wrote nearly forty books, including an exhaustive account of the harbours, shorelines, thumb-lines, and constellations of the Indian Ocean. The maritime trade of the Indian Ocean was of great significance to the Silk Road as a whole. With the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the blocking of the Silk Road, Europeans looked to find new ways to connect with the Far East. Stories tell that the Lion of the Sea taught Vasco de Gama how to sail the dangerous Cape of Good Hope and reach India, the first person to connect Europe to Asia by an ocean route.

Ibn Majid and de Gama's contemporary, Ferdinand Magellan, made the first personal circumnavigation of the Earth. Ferdinand Magellan's voyage was long and hard. Magellan stands among the first Europeans to sail around the dangerous Cape Horn. Sailing around the Cape Horn nearly destroyed the ship and killed everyone on board. When Magellan entered the calm ocean on the other side, he named it the Pacífico, which means 'peaceful'. We still call it the Pacific Ocean today.

The European Age of Discovery

It is during the time of European discovery that followed that we find the story of the Southern Ocean emerges. James Cook proved, by way of sailing, that the southern latitudes of the Earth have water. Before this, many held the belief that a Southern land occupied the area. It seems that calling the planet 'Earth' made more sense when we thought less of it was covered by water. Scientists, Geographers, Kings, and Politicians have argued ever since James Cook's voyage about where the boundaries of the Southern Ocean might be, or in some cases, whether it's a separate ocean at all or part of the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Finally, then, we turn our gaze northwards. The desire to reach Asia in ever shorter times led to a race. Which would be completed first, the Suez Canal or a successful navigation of the Northwest Passage? As unfeasible as it sounds, an 8900km long canal requiring some 1,500,000 labourers over ten years to build won the race. This wasn't even the first canal in Egypt. There were ancient canals uncovered by Napolean. A proposal by Venice to establish a canal before the Ottomans invaded Egypt, who, having conquered the land, decided it was too expensive and didn't attempt it.

The first successful voyage of the Northwest Passage wasn't until 1903, and it wasn't for another hundred years that cargo ships were able to intermittently make the journey. The Arctic, offering night skies free of light pollution is a great place for star-gazing. Both the great bear and the little bear can be seen clearly in the Northern Hemisphere. It is for these stars that the region is named; 'Arktos' is the Greek word for bear. This brings us neatly full circle in our hinterland journey back to Ancient Greece and a happy coincidence. The Arctic, named for bears, is home to them. The Antarctic, it's counterpoint and synonym, has none.

in conclusion

So, decision time. Curriculum choices are persistent problems. The choices about what to teach, in what order, and what to exclude, never go away. Does hinterland help or hinder? Do you see tales of exploration, human endeavour, disciplinary knowledge and a chance to promote the why as well as the what? Or does this read like a bloated, tangled, mess; better shelved so you can focus the little time you have with students on something else?