WHAT IS GEOMORPHOLOGY? x 1.1 THE ORIGIN OF GEOMORPHOLOGY Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers wondered how mountains and other surface features in the natural landscape had formed. Aristotle, Herodotus, Seneca, Strabo, Xenophanes, and many others dis- coursed on topics such as the origin of river valleys and deltas, and the presence of seashells in mountains. Xenophanes of Colophon (6. 580-480 nc) speculated that, as scashells are found on the tops of moun- tains, the surface of the Earch must have risen and fallen. Herodotus (c. 484-420 nc) thought that the lower part of Egypt was a former marine bay, reput- edly saying ‘Egypt is the gift of the river, referring to the year-by-year accumulation of river-borne silt in the Nile delta region. Aristotle (384-322 nc) conjec- ‘ured that land and sea change places, with arcas that are now dry land once being sea and ateas that are now sea once being dry land. Strabo (64/63 nc-a0 232) observed that the land rises and falls, and sug- gested that the size of a river delta depends on the nature ofits catchment, the largest deltas being found where the catchment areas are large and the surface rocks within itare weak. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4.n¢— ‘A 65) appears to have appreciated that rivers possess the power to erode their valleys. About a millennium. later, the illustrious Arab scholar ibn-Sina, also known, as Avicenna (980-1037), who translated Aristotle, propounded the view that some mountains are pro- duced by differential erosion, running water and wind. hollowing out softer rocks. During the Renaissance, many scholars debated Earth history. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) believed that changes in the levels of land and sea explained the presence of fossil marine shells in mountains. He also opined that valleys were cut by streams and that streams cartied material from cone place and deposited it elsewhere. Inthe eighteenth, century, Giovanni Targioni-Tozzeti (1712-84) recog- nized evidence of steam erosion. He argued that the valleys of the Amo, Val di Chaina, and Ombrosa in Italy were excavated by rivers and floods resulting from the bursting of barrier lakes, and suggested that the irregular courses of streams relate to the differences in the rocks in which they cus, a process now called differential erosion. Jean-Ftienne Guettard (1715-86) argued that streams destroy mountains and the sedi- ‘ment produced inthe process builds floodplains before boeing carried to the sea. He also pointed to the effi- cacy of marine erosion, noting the rapid destruction of chalk clifis in northern France by the sea, and the fact that the mountains of the Auvergne were extinct volcanoes. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-99) contended that valleys were produced by the streams that flow within them, and that glaciers may erode rocks. From these carly ideas onthe origin oflandforms arose modern geomorphology. (See Chorley etal. 1964 and Kennedy 2005 for details on the development of the subject.) and are affected by; human activities. Applied geomor- phologists explore this rich atea of enquiry, which is largely an extension of process geomorphology. Many landforms have a long history, and cheir present form. does not always relate to the current processes acting ‘upon them. The nature and rate of geomorphic processes, change with time, and some landforms were produced under different environmental conditions, surviving today as relict features. In high latitudes, many land- forms are relies from the Quaternary glaciations; but, in parts ofthe world, some landforms survive from millions and hundreds of millions of years ago. Geomorphology, then, has an importanc historical dimension, which is the domain of the historical geomorphologists. In short, modern geomorphologists study three chief aspects of landforms ~ form, process, and history. The first «wo are sometimes termed functional geomorphology, che last historical geomorphology (Chorley 1978). Process studies have enjoyed hegemony for some three or four decades. Historical studies were sidelined by process 5