After the death of Ptolemy, Christianity conquered the Roman Empire and most of Europe. Then we observe a Europe-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia, which afflicted the continent from A.D. 300 to at least 1300. During those centuries Christian faith and dogma suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so slowly, so painfully, and so scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers. We no longer find Ptolemy’s careful outlines of shores, rivers, and mountains, handily overlaid by a grid constructed on the best-known astronomical data. Instead, simple diagrams authoritatively declare the
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