Читать книгу Geography For Dummies - Jerry T. Mitchell - Страница 56

Because Earth is sphere-like, no compelling locale cries out and says, “Use me to locate the equator!” So where to put it? Old Hipparchus might simply have said, “It’s Greek to me!” and placed it anywhere. Instead, he wrestled with the challenge and came up with an ingenious solution.

He knew that Earth is sphere-like and that it rotates around an imaginary line called the axis. Look on a globe and you find two fixed points, halfway around Earth from each other, where the axis intersects Earth’s surface: the North Pole and the South Pole. So, Hipparchus drew a line that ran all the way around the globe and was always an equal distance (hence, equator) from the two Poles. The result is a latitudinal “starting line” from which all others could be placed on the globe.