The contemporary view of the Mediterranean is distorted by all manner of historical events that had yet to happen. The East-West Roman schism and subsequent fa

The contemporary view of the Mediterranean is distorted by all manner of historical events that had yet to happen. The East-West Roman schism and subsequent fall of the western empire, the early Islamic conquests, and later the sprawling Ottoman empire added a lot of cultural distance between the European Mediterranean, Asia Minor and MENA that did not meaningfully exist earlier.