Cabo da Roca - At the End of the World

1 - We are in Portugal, standing on a rocky hill. The sea roars 140 metres below us, stretching seemingly endlessly to the west. The wind is blowing hard, and the landscape is barren. No shrubs or trees grow here. The ground, however, is covered all over with a plant known as ice plant. We spot a few kestrels and peregrine falcons in the air. There is a lighthouse, and lots of curious tourists.

2 - We are at Cabo da Roca, the Cape of Rocks. Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, lies about 40 kilometers to the southeast. Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point of mainland Europe. The sea before us is the Atlantic Ocean.

Just 600 years ago, people thought this was the end of the world. For a long time, they believed that Earth was the center of the universe. They thought it was flat. All the land was surrounded by a vast ocean, and above the water and land stretched the sky, where the sun, moon and stars moved in mysterious ways.

3 - It was only after Christopher Columbus’s voyage in 1492 that people came to know that there were continents west of Europe too, later called North and South America. In 1519, five ships set sail under the command of Ferdinand Magellan on the first voyage around the world. Only one returned, but from then on people knew that the Earth was apparently a sphere.

4 - The distance from Cabo da Roca to the largest city in the Americas, New York, is just over 5,400 kilometres. Columbus took 10 weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean; today, a plane can make the journey in about eight hours.

5 - But this will not always be the case. Europe and America are moving apart by about two to three centimetres each year. This is because Earth’s continents lie on large tectonic plates that move constantly over their hot underlying layer, the magma. The movement is very slow, and we barely notice it during our lifetimes. But at three centimetres a year, that adds up to a distance of 1,500 kilometres in 50 million years.

6 - But then the Earth will look very different from how it does today. The continents will probably have different shapes, and there will be new mountains and oceans that we cannot yet know about.