1. Geography - Topography -Climate

The sea emerged as a result of tectonic and eustatic movements and climate changes in the area between Europe and Asia during the Quaternary Age (c. 10-15,000 years ago) when it linked with the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosphorus Thracicus, Propontis and the Hellespontus straits. The Straits of Kerch (Bosphorus Cimmerius) connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov (Maeotis Palus). The Sea covers a surface area of some 422,000 square kilometres and reaches a depth of some 2,210 m. Its northern and western littorals have large bays and peninsulas favouring ports and settlements. There are no large islands or an archipelagos in the Sea, with the Crimea being the largest peninsula.

The Quaternary Age influx of saltier waters from the Mediterranean released hydrogen sulphide at depths below 180-200m, and hence there are no deep life forms. The relative isolation of the Sea and the draining in it of large rivers like the Danube, Dniepr, Dniestr, Bug and the Don alongside many smaller ones cause low salinity of some 18 per cent. These are some of the reasons why fishery variety is low, with catches having a purely local significance. Despite the relatively favourable continental climate, colder winters see icing along the western, northern and eastern shores. Winters are also marked by powerful storms which could halt navigation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Good soils to the north and west of the Sea turned these hinterlands into wheatbowls. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages, they supplied the Eastern Mediterranean with grain with insignificant pauses.

2. Settlements and colonisation

The coastal geography of the Black Sea favoured early settlement. Most likely, this began in the Middle or Late Mousterian and the Upper Palaeolithic, some 12,000 years ago. Humans populated sheltered spaces such as the Caucasus caves, the Crimea, the mountains in Asia Minor and the western hinterland. The coasts began to be settled as ice melted in the early Holocene 8-10,000 years ago. Individual local cultures emerged in the New Stone Age 7-6000 BC. They continued developing and growing in the Stone/Copper Age 5-4000 BC. Many of their communities centred on copper deposits such as those in southern Anatolia, western Thrace and the lands beyond the northern coasts. Evidence of this is the Eneolithic necropolis near Odessos (Varna). Traces of overseas contacts in the Late Stone/Copper Age include stone anchors found on the sea bottom. It was at this time that Thracian settlements emerged along the eastern, southern and especially western coasts of the Black Sea.

2.1. Greek colonisation

The Greek colonisation took place in the middle of the 7th century BC. The first colonists to arrive by sea were Ionians, mainly from Miletus and Clazomenae in Asia Minor and from the islands of Samos and Chios. These were followed by others and gradually built a number of city communities and ports along the entire Pontic coastline. Some communities were based on earlier settlements, while others were new. Some, such as Histros, Apollonia Pontica, Odessos, Tomis, Cruni (Dionissopolis - Balchik), Mesambria, Callatis, Olbia, Phanagoria, Sinope, and Heracleia Pontica (Eregli) were independent, while others were subjected to earlier ones. They built up commercial, political and cultural links both among themselves and with areas further afield in Asia and Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean. The Pontic colonies also had links with neighbouring tribes and ethnic groups such as the Thracian tribe of the Odryssae or the Scythians.

2.2. Classical and later periods

In the 5th century BC some colonies attempted to erect state governance. Such was the Regnum Bosporanum centred on Panticapaeum. Between 170 and 139 BC the Pontus Regnum emerged along the southern coast and went on to exercise great economic and political influence. A formal alliance of Pontic cities resisted the Roman Empire under Mithridates VІ (132-63BC). Starting in 72 BC, however, the legions of Marcus Luculus took over Apollonia, followed by Callatis, Histros and communities further north, with Panticapaeum falling in 63BC. Pompey led the legions along the southern coast which that same year took over Heraclea, Sinope, Trapezus and Phasis (Poti), the last on the eastern coast.

The Black Sea was part of the Hellenic cultural sphere since early antiquity, being mentioned in myths and legends such as those of Jason and the Argonauts, Prometheus on the Rock and the Odyssey. Mentions and descriptions of the Sea and its coasts occur in Greek and Roman authors such as Herodotus, Polybius, Strabo, Diodorus, Ovid and Pliny the Elder. Precise and practical descriptions of the Black Sea, some accompanied by measurements of navigational distances, come to us in Pseudo-Skylax’s Periegese and Periplous (6th century BC), Arrian (c. 2nd century BC) and Amianus Marcellinus (AD 330-400).

3. Cartography and cartographical representations

The Black Sea was also included in the system of coordinates and the tables of geographical longitudes and latitudes in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geographia (c. 2nd century AD). A similar aid was the Roman 3rd century AD Itinerarium Antonini.