The Mediterranean Sea, or the Med, (AUDIO: The Enemy Beyond [+]Loading...["The Enemy Beyond (audio story)"]) was a sea located between Africa and Europe. It was known by the Romans as the Mare Nostra. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia [+]Loading...["Warlords of Utopia (novel)"])
Geography[[edit] | [edit source]]
It was a landlocked and virtually tideless sea. (AUDIO: The Stealers from Saiph [+]Loading...["The Stealers from Saiph (audio story)"])
The port city of Alexandria was located on the Mediterranean. (PROSE: The Ruby's Curse [+]Loading...["The Ruby's Curse (novel)"]) The island of Lemnos was located within the Mediterranean. (PROSE: Torchwood: The Encyclopedia [+]Loading...["Torchwood: The Encyclopedia (reference book)"])
History[[edit] | [edit source]]
During the Miocene, geological activity in Western Europe blocked off what would be known as the Straits of Gibraltar, sealing off the Mediterranean, which dried up, leaving a salty plain. Towards the end of the Miocene, the Atlantic broke through and refilled the basin in a cataclysmic flood. During the Pliocene, the Mediterranean was a shallow lake. (PROSE: Prehistory Repeating Itself [+]Loading...["Prehistory Repeating Itself (feature)"])
In 39 BC, the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams arrived on a Roman ship in the Mediterranean Sea which was unknowingly transporting a Gold Assassin to Cleopatra. (COMIC: Golden Slumbers [+]Loading...["Golden Slumbers (comic story)"])
In 64 AD, Ian Chesterton was taken as a slave and placed on a slave ship travelling across the Mediterranean Sea, but it subsequently was damaged in rough seas and broke up, allowing him and another slave to escape. (TV: The Romans [+]Loading...["The Romans (TV story)"])
Following the 1346 siege of Kaffa, in which Janibeg Khan's Mongol army introduced the bubonic plague to the city, Genoese merchants took the disease to the Mediterranean ports of southern Europe from where it spread throughout the continent, eventually killing a third of the population. (PROSE: Bunker Soldiers [+]Loading...["Bunker Soldiers (novel)"])
In 1966, the SS Jolly Wanderer sailed on the Mediterranean Sea. (AUDIO: The Steel Cascade [+]Loading...["The Steel Cascade (audio story)"])
Professor Adam Merchant once unearthed a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian shipwreck beneath the Mediterranean. (AUDIO: The Enemy Beyond [+]Loading...["The Enemy Beyond (audio story)"])
Parallel universe[[edit] | [edit source]]
In Roma V, the Mare Nostra was just a river after it was drained to irrigate the Sahara Desert. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia [+]Loading...["Warlords of Utopia (novel)"])
Other references[[edit] | [edit source]]
Landing on a beach, the Second Doctor briefly suggested that he was in the Mediterranean before pointing out a tidal sea. He later found that he was in Atlantis, situated west of Gibraltar and south of Azores on the Atlantic Ridge. (TV: The Underwater Menace [+]Loading...["The Underwater Menace (TV story)"])
After landing near San Martino in Italy, the Fourth Doctor observed the use of glass technology indicating he was in the Mediterranean area in the late 15th century. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora [+]Loading...["The Masque of Mandragora (TV story)"])