Inside The Americas - The Middle of the World Park

Today's program takes us to a park situated in the middle of the world, a point at 0° Latitude, determined in 1736 by the French Geodisic Mission. The team had traveled to Ecuador to determine the exact shape of the world. They wanted to prove that it was round and verify Newton’s theory of polar flattening. The Middle of the World Park is Ecuador’s most famous tourist attraction, and one of its features is the Ethnographic Museum, which allows visitors to explore the cultural history of Ecuador. Indigenous peoples such as the Quitucaras and the Yumbos already knew where the equatorial line was located due to the Sun’s position and they knew Ecuador was the middle of the world long before the Geodisic Mission arrived. teleSUR