Everything about Antipodes totally explained
In
geography, the
antipodes (from
Greek αντίποδες, from
anti- "opposed" and
pous "foot"; ) of any place on Earth is its
antipodal point; that is, the region on the Earth's surface which is diametrically opposite to it. Two points which are
antipodal [ænˈtɪpədəl] to one another are connected by a straight line through the centre of the Earth.
In vernacular
British English and
Irish English, "The Antipodes" is sometimes used to refer to
Australia,
New Zealand and
South Africa, and "Antipodeans" to their inhabitants. Strictly speaking, the antipodes of
Great Britain and
Ireland are in the
Pacific Ocean, south of New Zealand. The antipodes of Australia are in the
North Atlantic Ocean, while parts of
Spain,
Portugal, and
Morocco are antipodal to New Zealand.
Geography
The antipodes of any place on the Earth is the place which is
diametrically opposite it — so situated that a line drawn from the one to the other passes through the centre of the Earth and forms a true
diameter. For example, the antipodes of New Zealand's North Island lies in Spain. Most of the earth's land surfaces have ocean at its antipodes, this being a consequence of most land being in the northern hemisphere.
An antipodal point is sometimes called an
antipode, a
back-formation from the
Greek plural
antipodes, whose singular in Greek is
antipous.
The antipodes of any place on Earth must be distant from it by 180° of
longitude, and must be as many degrees to the north of the
equator as the original is to the south; in other words, the
latitudes are numerically equal, but one is north and the other south. The map shown above is based on this relationship; it shows a
Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection map of the Earth, in pink, overlaid on which is another map, in blue, shifted horizontally by 180° of longitude and inverted about the equator with respect to latitude. This map allows the antipodes of any point on the Earth to be easily located.
Noon at the one place is
midnight at the other (although
daylight saving and irregularly-shaped
time zones affect this in most places); seasonally, the longest day at one point corresponds to the shortest day at the other, and
midwinter at one point is contemporaneous with
midsummer at the other.
In the calculation of days and nights, midnight on the one side may be regarded as corresponding to the noon either of the previous or of the following day. If a voyager sails eastward, and thus anticipates the sun, his dating will be twelve hours in advance, while the reckoning of another who has been sailing westward will be as much in arrears. There will thus be a difference of twenty-four hours between the two when they meet. To avoid the confusion of dates which would thus arise, it's necessary to determine a
meridian at which dates should be brought into agreement, known as the
International Date Line.
Mathematical description
If the
coordinates (
longitude and
latitude) of a point on the Earth’s surface are (
θ,
φ), then the coordinates of the antipodal point can be written as (
θ ± 180°,−
φ). This relation holds true whether the Earth is approximated as a perfect
sphere or as a
reference ellipsoid.
Etymology
The Greek word is attested in
Plato's dialogue
Timaeus, already referring to a spherical Earth, explaining the relativity of the terms "above" and "below":
For if there were any solid body in equipoise at the centre of the universe, there would be nothing to draw it to this extreme rather than to that, for they're all perfectly similar; and if a person were to go round the world in a circle, he'd often, when standing at the antipodes of his former position, speak of the same point as above and below; for, as I was saying just now, to speak of the whole which is in the form of a globe as having one part above and another below isn't like a sensible man. |
The term is taken up by
Aristotle (
De caelo 308a.20),
Strabo,
Plutarch and
Diogenes Laertius, and was adopted into
Latin as
antipodes. The Latin word changed its sense from the original "under the feet, opposite side" to "those with the feet opposite", for example a
bahuvrihi referring to hypothetical people living on the opposite side of the Earth. Medieval illustrations imagine them in some way "inverted", with their feet growing out of their heads, pointing upward.
In this sense,
Antipodes first entered
English in
1398 in a translation of the
13th century De Proprietatibus Rerum by
Bartholomeus Anglicus, translated by
John of Trevisa:
Yonde in Ethiopia ben the Antipodes, men that haue theyr fete ayenst our fete.
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(
Translation: Yonder in Ethiopia are the Antipodes, men that have their feet against our feet.)
Historical significance
The term plays a certain role in the discussion about the shape of the Earth. The antipodes being an attribute of a
spherical Earth, some authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a
flat Earth. However, knowledge of the spherical Earth being widespread even during the
Dark Ages, only occasionally disputed on theological grounds, the medieval dispute surrounding the antipodes mainly concerned the question whether they were inhabitable: since the torrid
clime was considered impassable, it would have been impossible to
evangelize them, posing a dilemma between two equally unacceptable possibilities that either
Christ had appeared a second time in the antipodes, or that the inhabitants of the antipodes were irredeemably damned. Such an argument was forwarded by the Spanish theologian
Tostatus as late as the
15th century.
Saint Augustine (354–430) argued against people inhabiting the antipodes:
But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that's to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that's on no ground credible. And, indeed, it isn't affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they don't remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it doesn't follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it's peopled. |
Since these people would have to be descended from
Adam, they'd have had to travel to the other side of the Earth at some point; Augustine continues:
... it's too absurd to say, that some men might have taken ship and traversed the whole wide ocean, and crossed from this side of the world to the other, and that thus even the inhabitants of that distant region are descended from that one first man. |
The author of the Norwegian book
Konungs Skuggsjá, from around 1250, discusses the existence of antipodes. He notes that they (if they exist) will see the Sun in the north in the middle of the day - and that that'll have opposite seasons of the people living in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first European who actually visited the Southern Hemisphere and returned to write about it was
Marco Polo (on his way home, sailing south of the
Malay Peninsula in 1292). He noted that it was impossible to see the star
Polaris from there.
The idea of dry land, inhabited or not, in the Southern climes, the
Terra Australis was introduced by
Ptolemy, and appears on European maps as an imaginary continent from the
15th century. In spite of having been discovered relatively late by European explorers,
Australia was inhabited very early in human history, the ancestors of the
Indigenous Australians having reached it at least 50,000 years ago.
List of antipodes
Earth
Around 71% of the earth's surface is covered by
oceans; thus the majority of locations on land don't have land-based antipodes.
Cities
Exact or almost exact antipodes:
To within 100 km, with at least one major city (pop ≥ 1 million):
Xi'an (China) — Santiago, or more precisely Rancagua or San Bernardo (Chile)
Auckland (New Zealand) — Seville (Spain)
Tianjin (China) — Bahía Blanca (Argentina)
Perth (Western Australia) — Hamilton (Bermuda)
Taipei (Taiwan) — Asunción (Paraguay)
Taiwan (formerly called Formosa) is partly antipodal to the province
of Formosa in Argentina.
Other major cities or capitals close to being antipodes:
Madrid (Spain) — Wellington (New Zealand), ~160 km
Bogotá (Colombia) — Jakarta (Indonesia), ~200 km
Guayaquil (Ecuador) — Medan (Indonesia), ~220 km
Phnom Penh (Cambodia) — Lima (Peru), ~220 km
Irkutsk (Russia)— Punta Arenas (Chile)
Suva (Fiji) — Timbuktu (Mali)
Mecca (Saudi Arabia) — Avarua (Cook Islands)
Jodhpur or Bikaner (India)— Easter Island
Cherbourg (France)— Antipodes Islands
Pago Pago (American Samoa) — Zinder (Niger)
Barranquilla (Colombia)— Christmas Island (Australia)
Hué and Da Nang (Vietnam)— Arequipa (Peru)
Manila (Philippines) — Cuiabá (Brazil)
Cities and Geographic features
Gibraltar is antipodal to a land location on Great Barrier Island about 130 km from Auckland, New Zealand. This illustrates the old bromide that the sun never set on the British Empire; the sun still doesn't set on the British Commonwealth.
The northern part of New Caledonia, still an overseas territory of France, is antipodal to some thinly-populated desert in Mauritania, a part of the former French West Africa. As with the British Empire, the sun never set on the French Empire at its peak, either.
Santa Vitória do Palmar, the most southerly town of more than 10,000 people in Brazil, is antipodal to Cheju Island, the southernmost territory of the Republic of Korea.
The Big Island of Hawaii is antipodal to the Okavango Delta in Botswana.
Desolate Kerguelen Island is antipodal to an area of thinly-inhabited plains on the border between the US state of Montana and the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
St. Paul Island and Amsterdam Island are antipodal to thinly-populated parts of the eastern part of the US state of Colorado.
South Georgia Island is antipodal to the northernmost part of Sakhalin Island.
Lake Baikal is partially antipodal to the Straits of Magellan.
By definition, the North Pole and the South Pole are antipodes.
Other bodies
Caloris Basin - "Weird Terrain" (Mercury)
Mare Orientale - Mare Marginis (The Moon)
Mare Imbrium - Mare Ingenii (The Moon)
Argyre Planitia - Utopia Planitia (Mars)
Popular culture
In 2006, Ze Frank challenged viewers of his daily webcast the show with zefrank to create an "Earth sandwich" by simultaneously placing two pieces of bread at antipodal points on the Earth's surface. The challenge was successfully completed by viewers in Spain and New Zealand.
The May 19th, 2008 Official Lost Audio Podcast gave credence to a theory that the Island is located at Tunisia's antipode, which is in the south Pacific east of New Zealand.
In November 2007, during the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the Russian documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky presented his plans to make a film about antipodes.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Antipodes'.
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