If the Mediterranean Sea was a lake...

check out Atlantropa, super interesting if they actually did it

If the Mediterranean was cut off from the atlantic it would evaporate.
It's happened before, the messinian salinity crisis. It almost completely dried up and the nile became the world's tallest waterfall.

>Spain would likely build a med empire
Spain would be a hell of a lot poorer without the gibraltar trade. France would be muvh more likely to take over Europe, since there would be no alternative to continental land trade.

But that did happen. Homo erectus/ergaster were capable of building rafts to cross large bodies of water. Crossing that little strait was walk in the park for them. Plus Spain actually holds the oldest h.e fossiles in all Western Europe.

Doubtful, if that were the case, sapiens should have easily been able to reach sardiniam yet they didn't until the renaissance.

I don't know user. Gibralter is only like 9 miles across, meanwhile sardinia is 100+ from the coast of anything.

A lake of that size would still be salty for sure

Venice would be a shithole without the sea trade, which would cause Italy's cultural stagnation, and as we all know that's the core of western civilization

Spain would have been conquered by the Muslims then.

Wait...

But Spain also has ports in the Atlantic. .

Their trade was mainly the eastern mediteranean. They didn't trade into the Atlantic ocean to my knowledge.

I don't personally think the impact would have been too huge. The Phoenicians would have been hurt by it, so that could of had a butterfly affect on the development of Spain. But I think it's fair to say their andalusian settlements would have just made a land route to the guadalquivir river region. Since the straight is so small, it has been typically controlled by a nation anyways, and there would have eventually been a canal made.

Gibraltar is just a thin isthmus in this scenario, right? Spain can set up a port on either side of it, make a killing from the overland transport of goods in between the Mediterranean and Atlantic

Venice traded mostly in the eastern med. Genoa was the one trading in the Atlantic (in addition to the med).

Anyway, med-northern europe shipping trade wasn't much relevant until the XVII century. Until then most of it was done by land, with Venice being the hub for Vienna/northeast Europe and Genoa/Milan the one for the Rhein area.

The lack of a Strait wouldn't have harmed the italian republics, quite the contrary, it would have prevented the damage done by British/Dutch commercial incursions in the Med since the XVII, the ones really destroying the Italian commercial networks.

I'm interested in hearing your take on this
sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523083548.htm

A freshwater lake? That would make a lot more land habitable thru irrigation. The Med already virtually IS a lake, tho, so if you mean a saltwater lake than literally nothing would be different.

The fuck is that ?

Yeah idk why people are saying spain wouldn't be active in the oceans - Cadiz, the main port of Spain during that age, is on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar.

"Spain" would straddle the isthmus and would include much of what we call Morocco.

It was Sevilla, not Cadiz until the XVIII

And "Spain" was born in next to the warters of the Gulf of Biscay.

>There's no sea passage between the Med and the Atlantic just a strip of land. All goods have to be brought by land to either side of the ishtmus until eventually a canal is built.

How many golds would you reckon the monopoly of all med-atlantic sea trade would bring to Spain?

You're right, my mistake. Still, Columbus sailed from Cadiz, so it's not unreasonable to think that it would have simply replaced Seville from the start had Seville not had ocean access.

This would be a problem, but Europe has many rivers and trade can go north-south. Also, Spain could build a port on either side and a road connecting them, yes this would increase the price of doing trade but that in itself might stimulate land routes to become more efficient, which might speed the development of the North.

It wouldn't be a problem at all.

Also trade did go north-south through waterways and land routes, cause there's this thing called the Alps, but the shipping was much more competitive after the Renaissence.

Columbus sailed from Palos.

Lel 0/2, user

Yes but building and maintaining two fleets is fucking expensive

Less so when you consider how different an Atlantic fleet must be from a med fleet. In the Med, galleys are king, but on the high seas you need galleons / caravels. Spain already maintained two separate fleets for this reason, albeit IRL they could supplement their galleys with caravels when needed.

Most of the damage done to Italian commerce was really just them decaying during the 14th century ownwards

Not that fag but developments in cannon and ship technology are at least as important. Once ocean-going ships became capable of out-maneuvering and out-gunning galleys, the Italian commercial republics were basically screwed.

>The Mediterranean is has less precipitation than evaporation, so if it were a lake it would slowly dry up. As it dried it would become more and more saturated with salt. The end result would be a barren wasteland where pretty much nothing could grow. Greece, Spain, Italy and southern France would be extremely hot extremely harsh deserts that were basically uninhabitable, because precipitation in those areas is derrived mostly from mediterannean evaporate. Impossible to say but my guess would be that either the celts or the slavs would have ended up dominating europe instead of the latins.

This gets theoretical, but Cadiz only existed because it was founded by the Phoenicians. In this scenario, it would probably of never been settled to the extent it did.

>Humans developed out of kangland
>Humans didn't evolve all over the earth like every other mammal
Your opinion is trash.

>earliest homo sapiens fossils in Africa date to ~300,000 BC
>no homo sapiens fossils anywhere outside of Africa until ~100,000 BC

the fact that they were not found doens't mean it's impossible

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis
The Mediterranean has been cut off from the atlantic before, the water evaporates leaving a hand full of small hypersaline lakes.
When the straights finally opened up again the atlantic flooded into the basin, and they would have seen water levels raising ~10 meters a day.