24 – Europe’s north-south divides

This map is yet another dissection of Europe, this time focussing on the north-south divides in the continent. Some of the boundaries here were already present in one or both of the earlier maps, especially the religious (Protestant-Catholic) and linguistic (Germanic-Romance) divides. Three additional borders are of a more climatic nature:

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• The northern limit of vineyards, winding its way from the north coast of Spain up via France, to reach its northernmost point  in the Belgian-German border area and thereafter undulating through Central Europe (almost perfectly following the southern border of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the Ukraine).

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• Then, there’s a divide between plains and mountains: this line starts north of the Pyrennees, dips into the Mediterranean before heading straight north to take in the Alps, after which is crosses Bavaria and Austria. After this, the line falls between Poland and Slovakia before heading south through Romania, via the Transylvanian Alps.

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• Finally, there’s the divide between cool, wet and hot, dry climates, splitting Spain, skirting the South of France, the North of Italy, the Adriatic coast of the former Yugoslavia and the north of Greece.

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One wonders, with global warming and all, whether the first and the third of these lines shouldn’t be moved northwards by now…

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