Pliny the Elder to Pliny the Younger.............Ancient Greece meets the Baltic Sea...............Ibn Fadlan.........met the Rus...............................in the 1100s or so.......................in the Volga river valley..........met the Bulgar Kings........Ibn Fadlan...........was from the caliphate of ancient Iraq.............................the ancient world was more connected than we think it was.....




role of Medieval Latin in cartography. It might be connected to the Germanic word belt, a name used for two of the Danish straits, the Belts, while others claim it to be directly derived from the source of the Germanic word, Latin balteus "belt".^[9] Adam of Bremen himself compared the sea with a belt, stating that it is so named because it stretches through the land as a belt (Balticus, eo quod in modum baltei longo tractu per Scithicas regiones tendatur usque in Greciam).
He might also have been influenced by the name of a legendary island mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder. Pliny mentions an island named Baltia (or Balcia) with reference to accounts of Pytheas and Xenophon. It is possible that Pliny refers to an island named Basilia ("the royal") in On the Ocean by Pytheas. Baltia also might be derived from belt and mean "near belt of sea, strait."