The Mediterranean Sea in Asia, Europe, Africa between the three continents, there is a sea like a sink, some people jokingly called it "God forgot in the human foot basin." Christianity, which grew out of Judaism, and later Islam, took root in these waters.

Early Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations; Aegean civilization represented by Crete; The megalithic civilization represented by Malta; Phoenicians and Carthaginians facing the sea; The Hittites and Persians who crisscrossed Western Asia; There were also the Greeks, who left the idea of democracy to the world, and the Romans, who ushered in a Mediterranean era.

This "foot basin" is not only the birthplace of European civilization, but also the stage for the interpretation of many ancient civilizations. This blue sea is the Mediterranean Sea.

In ancient times, our ancestors looked across the sea and imagined the world across it. What prompted people to open up the channels of communication between East and West?

The Mediterranean Sea is surrounded by the continent of Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east.

It is about 4,000 km long from east to west, 1,800 km wide at its widest point from north to south, and has an area (including the Marmara Sea, but excluding the Black Sea) of about 2,512,000 square kilometers (970,000 square miles), making it the largest intercontinental sea in the world.

It is bounded by the Tunis Strait between the Apennine Peninsula, Sicily and Tunisia, and is divided into two parts: east and west. The average depth is 1450 meters, and the deepest is 5092 meters. The salinity is high, up to 39.5‰.

The deepest recorded point in the Mediterranean Sea is the Ionian Basin south of Greece, at 5,121 m (16,800 ft) below sea level. The Mediterranean Sea is the oldest sea in the world, older than the Atlantic Ocean.

The Mediterranean Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean in the west by the Strait of Gibraltar, and to the east by the Turkish Straits (Dardanelles and Bosphorus, Sea of Marmara) and the Black Sea. The western end is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Strait of Gibraltar, which is only 13 km (8 mi) at its narrowest point.

The channel is relatively shallow. The Black Sea is connected to the northeast by the Dardanelles Strait - Sea of Marmara - Bosphorus Strait.

The southeast is connected to the Red Sea by the Suez Canal, which opened in the 19th century. The Mediterranean Sea is one of the oldest seas in the world, while the Atlantic Ocean is the youngest. The Mediterranean Sea is located at the junction of the Eurasian plate and the African plate, and is one of the strongest seismic zones in the world. In the Mediterranean there are Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna.

The Mediterranean coast is hot and dry in summer and warm and humid in winter, which is called the Mediterranean climate. Vegetation, hard leaves, waxy leaf surface, deep root system, has adapted to hot and dry summer climate drought tolerance characteristics, is a subtropical evergreen sachyphyllum.

Abundant in light and heat, it is the main subtropical fruit producing area in Europe, rich in citrus, figs and grapes, as well as the woody oil crop olive.

The earliest Jews and ancient Greeks called it "sea" or "sea." Because ancient people only know that this sea is located between three continents, it is called the "Mediterranean Sea". The English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian spellings come from the Latin MareMediterraneum, where "medi" means "in... "Between", "terra" means "land", and its full name means "sea in the middle of land".

The name first appeared in ancient books in the 3rd century AD. In the 7th century, the Spanish writer Isil first used the Mediterranean Sea as a geographical name.

The Mediterranean Sea was once thought to be a remnant of the Sea of Tethys, which once encircled the Eastern Hemisphere. We know that it's a structurally young basin. Its continental shelf is relatively shallow. The widest shelf is located in Gabes Bay on the east coast of Tunisia and is 275 km (170 mi) long.

Much of the Adriatic seabed is also a continental shelf. The Mediterranean Sea floor is a deposit of lime, mud and sand, with blue mud below. The coast is generally steep and rocky, deeply jagged. The Rhone, Po and Nile rivers form the only large deltas in the Mediterranean. The continuous injection of surface water from the Atlantic Ocean is the main source of replenishment for the Mediterranean Sea.

The most stable component of its circulation is the current that flows along the coast of North Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar. The whole Mediterranean basin is tectonically active and earthquakes often occur. It is one of the strongest earthquake zones in the world. Here, the underwater crust is broken, earthquakes and volcanoes are frequent, and the world famous Vesuvius and Etna volcanoes are distributed in this area.

A ridge between Sicily and the African continent divides the Mediterranean into east and west. There are three major basins separated by ridges in the West Mediterranean Sea. From west to east are: Alboran Basin, Algerian Basin and Tyrrhenian Basin. The Mediterranean Sea is bounded to the east by the Ionian Basin (to the northwest by the Adriatic) and the Levantine Basin (to the northwest by the Aegean Sea). The large islands in the Mediterranean are Majorca, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes.

The three major Southern European peninsulas and Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and other islands in the sea divide the Mediterranean into several small sea areas: Ligurian Sea, Tyrrhenian Sea, Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea, Aegean Sea, etc. The sea floor of the Mediterranean Sea is undulating, the ridge and the basin are staggered, and the Apennine Peninsula, Sicily and Tunisia in Africa are demarcated, dividing the Mediterranean Sea into two parts: east and west.

The eastern Mediterranean is much larger than the Western Mediterranean, the seabed topography is rugged, the depth is very wide, the shallowest is only tens of meters (such as the northern Adriatic Sea), the deepest can reach more than 4,000 meters (such as the Ionian Sea). In some places, the difference in water depth between the bow and stern of a sailing ship is as much as four or five hundred meters.

The Mediterranean climate has mild, rainy winters and dry, hot summers. With the exception of eastern Tunisia on its southern shore, the air flows through mountain gaps into the Mediterranean Sea.

Much of the North African coast rarely receives more than 250 mm (10 in) of rainfall per year, while on the rugged Dalmatia coast of Croatia, some areas receive 2,500 mm (100 in) of rainfall per year.

Although there are many rivers into the Mediterranean, such as the Nile, the Rhone, the Ebro River, but because it is in the subtropical zone, the evaporation is too large, far more than the recharge of the river and rain, so that the Mediterranean water income is not as much as the expenditure, because of the role of the sea temperature difference and the salinity of the Atlantic sea water is different, so that the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic sea water can have regular exchange.

Less salty Atlantic water flows from the surface of the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea to replenish water sources that have evaporated, while salty Mediterranean water sinks and flows from the lower level of the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean, creating a circulation of water up to 7,000 cubic meters per second.

Without a constant supply of water from the Atlantic, in about 300 years the Mediterranean would dry up and become a huge salty crater.