The Greek Islands are the only land in the entire Mediterranean region.

On Earth, the Mediterranean is the twisted, crumpled remnant of the much larger Tethys Sea; an ocean in miniature, full of ridges, deeps and volcanoes. It's not unique--the Caribbean, the seas of Indonesia, and the Scotia Basin off Tierra del Fuego come to mind--but it does pack a lot of interesting geography into a small area. So I was curious what would become of it on Abyssia.

The answer shocked me. The Mediteranean, Red and Black Seas, though complex, are on average a mile shallower than the oceans around them. On Abyssia, therefore, with altitudes inverted, even the deepest basins and trenches in this tormented region usually don't reach the surface, or even within a kilometer of it.

The Greek Islands are lone exception: the tips of a long arc of coral reefs running over 1200 km, roughly from our world's Rhodos (off Turkey) to Ithaka (off Greece, near Albania), paralleling and just south of the Cretan Trench. All the islands are low, but two of the westernmost are quite large: slender Kythera is 110 km long but only 30 wide (70 by 20 mi), like a miniature Crete minus the mountains; Kephalonia (sometimes called Nisai) to the northwest, is a broad wedge of low hills and plains, 70 by 95 km (45 by 60 mi). The chain dwindles to the east: the modest Cretan Chain lies south of the Minoan Deep (our Crete); Rhodos is just east of our Rhodos, and smaller; around 50 km across (30 mi).

These Greek Isles are worth comparing with our similarly sized and equally isolated Hawaiian chain. Hawaii is rainer, ruggeder, a patchwork of microclimates. Its huge volcanoes and high crags cast rainshadows; you find rainforest and deserts five miles apart on the same island. The interiors of most Hawaiian Islands were barren heights, mazes of crags and canyons, or impenetrable thickets; so the Polynesians settled densely only on the coasts.

In contrast, the Greek Islands are eminently livable all over. Gentle topography, mild climate, farmable soil as well as fishing better than Hawaii, due to the long arc of reefs offshore. They could sustain a large population, even without much technology. But will they? Will anyone even find them?

Apart from the arctic Lena Islands, the Greek Islands are the loneliest lands on Abyssia. They're about 1900 km (1200 mi) from the nearest land, the Biscay Islands off Atlantis. The Lenas, hardly a center of civilization, lie 4000 km to the north; equally far to the southeast lies Somalia; but from Rhodos you could sail due west or south 10,000 km without finding so much as a reef.

So will the Greek Islands be found? Possibly. If deep-sea navigation does develop on Abyssia, and mariners go past following the island chains and start looking for shortcuts, one of the most obvious is from eastern Atlantis to Somalia, gateway to the other lands of our Indian Ocean.

Or the discovery could be local. For the juxtaposition of ridges and deeps like the Alpine and Balkan Trenches will in places force deep currents to the surface. Though not as shallow as our Grand Banks, the long skein of fishing banks between Atlantis and the Greek Islands should be just as rich; they'll lure the Basque fishers of the Biscay Chain (right side of global map; part of the Iberian Isles) to sail ever further east. Over the Pyrenees Trench to the Tyrrhenian Banks, then the Ionian, and eventually the Levantine. It's a mirror image of our world's Basque wave of secret exploration west to the New World. The Abyssian Basques will keep their fishing grounds quiet too, of course; Basques are Basques.

So in the end, I think, it's Basques who will find and settle the Greek Islands for purely local reasons--they're safe refuges from politics, persecution and taxes.

Not pirate utopias, but fishy ones.

The following route snakes around Abyssia's major lands; italicized names have no pages yet.

the Lena Is. (brr!) - the Greek Is. - Atlantis -- Azorea -- Nazca and Chilea -- Morningtonia -- Agassiz -- South Pacifica -- East Pacifica -- Hawaiian Sea -- Pacifica Desert -- Filipinia -- Vanuatu and Banda Is. -- Tasman Is. -- Diamantina Pen. -- Whartonia -- Chagosia -- Somalia -- Mascarenia -- Crozetia -- Weddellia -- Argenta -- Pernambuco -- Angolia -- Tristania -- Agulhas -- Natalia --

Abyssia's homepage - map - (don't click yet) peoples of Abyssia - (don't click yet) Abyssia's evolution - regional tours - (don't click yet) Gazetteer

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