The world is rectangular, stretching from Iberia (Spain) to India, and from Africa to Scythia (Russia). Its four sides are formed by high mountains on which rests the celestial vault. The earth is but a chest of giant dimensions, and on the flat bottom of this coffer are all the seas and lands known to man. The sky is the lid of this trunk and the mountains are its walls. This is the childish image of the earth drawn by Cosmas Indicopleustes, a scholar-explorer of the 6th century in his Christian Topography.