UNIT 1 : HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY

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 THESE ARE THE TALKING POINTS

Brief History of Geography Main Branches of Geography

(Ancient & Modern )

Geographic Questions Definition and Branches of Human

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Geography
 GEOGRAPHY
Geography is the study of the
diverse environments, places, and
spaces of the Earth's surface and
their interactions (Johnson, 1999).
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 Geographers seek answers to two fundamental
questions: Where are things located? Why are they
located where they are? Although others
would also include the question: How does their location
influence things in other places? The
third question is related to Waldo Tobler's first law of
geography, which states that "everything
is related to everything else, but near things are more
related than distant things" (Knox &
Marston, 2004).
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 Geography, as we know it now has its origins
in ancient Greece some 2000 years ago. The
term geography originated from the Greek
words Geo (Earth) and graphy (to write); thus,
geography means "to write about the earth."
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HISTORY OF GEOGRAPHY
 NAME THE SEVEN
CONVENTIONAL CONTINENTS
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 The history of geography can be divided into
two main parts: the history of exploration and
mapmaking and academic discipline
development.
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 in the 5th century BCE his knowledge
became known as geography, which
was first used in the title of
Eratosthenes's book Geographica in
the 3rd century BCE (Johnston, 2018).
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 Published three centuries later.
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 - collated a large amount of
information about the latitude and
longitude of places in his work,
PTOLEMY - described geography as "a
representation in pictures of the
whole known world together with
the phenomena which are
contained therein"
(Johnston,2018).
- Led to the creation of detailed
maps with coordinated
- The entire known world at the time
included only Europe, Africa, and
Asia. Ptolemy overestimated the
size of Asia, which led many
people to believe that the world as
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a whole lay within these three

continents.
 EUROPEANS
believed that the world was flat.
The T-O maps were the accepted
maps at that time. A T-O map
showed a flat round Earth
consisting of Asia, Europe, and
Africa with Jerusalem at the map's
center.
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 For instance, in China, Phei Hsiu and other
Chinese geographers were able to draw
maps that were more accurate than the
T-O maps of European cartographers. The
Chinese had the advantage of having
admirals who navigated the Pacific and
Indian Oceans.
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 Meanwhile, Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and
Granada (a city in Spain) became the
world's scholarship centers.
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 the Christian King of Sicily,
commissioned the Muslim geographer
alIdrisi (1100-1165) to collect all
geographic knowledge. The collection
was later called "Roger's Book.”
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 Ptolemy’s Guide
to Geography was made available to
many people in Europe by 1475.
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 GUTENBERG
INVENTED
THE
PRINTING
PRESS
AROUND
1445.
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 Ptolemy’s Guide
to Geography was made available to
many people in Europe by 1475.
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 I’M… CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS

Following Ptolemy's guide, Columbus

attempted to reach Asia, but we all know that
he landed upon the Americas instead. He
died thinking that he reached Asia.

.
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 The explorers of this
period include Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand
Magellan, Jacques Cartier, Sir Martin
Frobisher, Sir Francis Drake, John, and
Sebastian Cabot John Davis.
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1492
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 Bernhardus Varenius (1622-1650) published
a critical geographic reference titled
Geographia generalis (General Geography:
1650). Varenius used direct observations
and primary measurements to present some
new ideas concerning geographic knowledge.
This volume became a standard geographic
reference for about a Century.
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 I’M… IMMANUEL
KANT

a German philosopher, made a significant

impact on geography by solidifying its place
among university disciplines. He was also
instrumental in making geography a field of
study separate from theology.
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.
 Kant believed that geography is a descriptive
taxonomic discipline rather than a science. Kant used
the term 'chorographic,' meaning descriptive, to
describe geography. According to his
Ankundingung (1757), Earth can be studied and
interpreted in five different ways.
▪ The Mathematical Study of the Earth
▪ Moral Geography
▪ Political Geography
▪ Commercial Geography
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▪ Theological Geography
 I’M… ALEXANDER
VON HUMDOLT
- "the greatest scientific traveler who ever
lived," according to Charles Darwin.
- Transformed western science in the 19th
Century.
- quantitative work on botanical geography
became the foundation for biogeography.
- His long-term systematic geophysical
measurement advocacy became the
foundation for modern geomagnetic and
meteorological monitoring
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- (Love, 2008 & Johnson, 2009).

-
 I’M… CARL RITTER
- referred to as an "armchair" geographer
because he did not pursue original
research; instead, he tended to rely on
others' field observations.
- His well-known work, Die Erdkunde, was a
regional description of the Earth as
human beings' home.
- identifying geography as a scientific
discipline where humans and nature's
interaction is the most important.
-
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 I’M… FRIEDRICH
RATZEL
- works included Die Erde und das Leben:
Eine vergleichende Erdkunde (1901–02;
“Earth and Life: A Comparative
Geography”), Politische Geographie
(1897; “Political-Geography”), where he
introduced concepts that contributed to
Lebensraum and Social Darwinism.
- His essay "Lebensraum" (1901), often
cited as a starting point in geopolitics,
was a biogeography study.
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 Ratzel established the foundations
of human geography in his two-volume
Anthropogeographie in 1882 and 1891. This
work was misinterpreted by many of his
students, creating many
environmental determinists. His three-volume
book The History of Mankind was published in
English in 1896 and contained over 1100
excellent engravings and remarkable
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chromolithography.
 I’M… CARL SAUCER
- Most influential cultural geographer of
the 20th Century.
- focuses on the material landscape
moderated with human ecology and the
damaging impacts on the environment.
- published The Morphology of Landscape
in 1925.
- tried to demonstrate that nature does
not create culture; instead, culture works
with and on nature and creates living
patterns.
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 Sauer believed that human impacts on the
landscape to be a manifestation of culture.
Therefore, he argued, to understand a
culture, a geographer must learn to read
the landscape.
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 MAIN BRANCHES OF GEOGRAPHY

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

looks at the impact and it regards the natural

behavior of people and processes of the Earth,
how they relate to such as climate
the physical world. and plate tectonics.
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 Although there is a division, it is essential to
keep in mind that all geography areas are
interconnected: for example, climate change is
part of physical and human geography.

Environmental geography is the main area of

geography that looks at the connection between
physical and human geography.
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 AREAS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
GEOMORPHOLOGY
studies the shape of the Earth's surface and how it came about

HYDROLOGY
focuses on the Earth's water

GLACIOLOGY
is concerned with glaciers and ice sheets
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 AREAS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
BIOGEOGRAPHY
studies species, how species are distributed, and why

CLIMATOLOGY
focuses on climate

PEDOLOGY
is about soils
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 AREAS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
PALEOGEOGRAPHY
is concerned with how the continents have moved over time

COSTAL GEOGRAPHY
deals with the effect of ocean and land upon each other

OCEANOGRAPHY
involves the study of the oceans and seas
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 AREAS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
QUATERNARY SCIENCE
is the geography of the last 2.6 million years (including the last ice age)

LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY
deals with how the landscape affects things like the distribution of plants and
animals

GEOMATICS

involves the gathering, storing, and processing of geographic information like

making maps
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 AREAS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

▪ Cultural geography: deals with how ▪ Historical geography: how people have
things like religion, language, and studied and thought about geography in
government vary across the world the past

▪ Development geography: is concerned ▪ Population geography: how populations

with standards of living and quality of life grow in different places and people
across the world migrate

▪ Urban geography: cities and built-up

areas
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 Location is fundamental to geography. Location
refers to the place where a particular
point or object exists. The answer to the question
"where" means to describe the following
features of a location:
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 WHERE?
TOPONYM SITE EXAMPLE

is the actual
SITUATION MATHEMATIC
or place-name. location of a
AL LOCATION
settlement on the
or relative Earth, which a precise
location. includes its statement of
physical location using a
characteristics. measurement
system usually
from a defined
point of origin and
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using a framework
of coordinates.
 The second question geographers ask is, “why."
They are interested in finding out, “why
are things located where they are?" To answer
this question, geographers generally apply
two sets of organizational tools or analysis
methods: regional analysis and spatial analysis.
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 Regional Analysis involves understanding the
similarities and differences relative
to the relationships between people and places.
Regions can be defined using their
internal characteristics. Regions are classified
into three types: formal, functional,
or vernacular (Lumen Learning, 2020).
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 1. A formal region consists of governmental,
administrative, or political boundaries
that can separate states, provinces, or
countries. A formal region is where people
who have one or more characteristics in common
live together. Some formal
regions have distinct boundaries, making them
easy to identify, such as counties
or states.
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 2. Functional regions
have boundaries intended for a practical
function within a particular area. The
functional region ends, and its boundaries stop
when the function of an area ends.
A functional region is based around a specific
activity or a particular function. There
is usually a center or point of distribution
within a functional region for whatever
function or activity the region is concerned
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with.
 3. Vernacular regions have a more loosely
defined boundary that is based on
people's perceptions. Vernacular regions tend to
be fluid because different people
may have different opinions about the regions'
limits.
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 Spatial Analysis – it focuses on the interactions
between two or more areas,
including the diffusion, or spread, of people and
their characteristics from one place
to another over time. According to Rubenstein
(2003), distribution is “the
arrangement of a feature in space.”
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 Human Geography is the study of the interrelationships
between people, place, and environment, and how these vary
spatially and temporally across and between locations
(Castree., Kitchin, & Rogers, 2013). Human geography
concentrates on the spatial
organization and processes shaping people's lives and
activities and their interactions with places and nature.
Human geography is more allied with the social sciences and
humanities, sharing their philosophical approaches and
methods. Human geography consists of several
sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different elements of
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human activity and organization:

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 Do you have any questions?
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