Diagram illustrating the classical climatic zones. The torrid (and "unhabitable") climatic zone of the equator is in red, the cold (and "unhabitable") climatic zones at the poles are in white/blue.

"Dating back to classical times, most people thought of the world as divided into zones of climate: a frozen climate at the poles, a torrid climate at the equator, and a blissfully mild (and therefore habitable) climate in between. They logically connected the temperature difference of these zones with proximity to the sun, and to a large extent they were right. Where they were wrong, however, was in their belief that the cold and torrid zones were impassable." [1] archive copy at the Wayback Machine

This image was made by Leinad-Z. Based on Image:Mappaemundi vertical.gif by John Hamer and inspired by images from Macrobius' Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. More specifically, the picture is related with the two diagrams below.

• 
  The five climatic zones of the earth.
• 
  Figure of the Earth from Macrobius.

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5CC BY 2.5 Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 truetrue

This geology image could be re-created using vector graphics as an SVG file. This has several advantages; see Commons:Media for cleanup for more information. If an SVG form of this image is available, please upload it and afterwards replace this template with {{vector version available|new image name}}. It is recommended to name the SVG file “Climatic zones and antipodes.svg”—then the template Vector version available (or Vva) does not need the new image name parameter.