Landforms of Gibraltar - Iberian Peninsula (Paperback)

Chapters: Iberian Peninsula. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 48. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Iberian Peninsula is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day states Portugal, Spain, Andorra, the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulasthe Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. It is bordered on the southeast and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the north, west and southwest by the Atlantic Ocean. The Pyrenees form the northeast edge of the peninsula, separating it from the rest of Europe. In the south, it approaches the northern coast of Africa. It is the second-largest peninsula in Europe, with an area of 582,860 square kilometres (225,040 sq mi). The English word Iberia was adapted from the use of the Ancient Greek word (Ibr a) by the Greek geographers under the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. The name was not then used to mean a single political country or a population speaking a single language. Strabo's Iberia was delineated from Keltik by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass south (he mistakenly said west) of there. The Ancient Greeks discovered Iberia by voyaging westward. Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term around 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with ... Iberia." According to Strabo prior historians used Iberia to mean the country "this side of the (Ibros)" as far north as the Rhone river in France but currently they set the Pyrenees as the limit. Polybius respects that limit but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, with the Atlantic side having no n...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=1488