Account of on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars
Also contains a lot of geographic and ethnographic information
Oikoumene’ (known world)
Description of the flow of the Nile
Indirect accounts of the circumnavigation of Africa
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Provided evidence of the spherical form of the Earth
Yü Chi T’u
The Map Tracing the Tracks of Yu (3rd century BCE)survey of soils, agricultural products and rivers of several Chinese provinces
Produced in ~1137 CE from information in 3rd century BCE survey – drawn with grids
Also used for printing
Three physical geography themes identified: coastal hydrography and description; local topographies; geographic encyclopedia
Eratosthenes (276-~195BCE)
Chief librarian at Alexandria and ‘Father of Geography’
Provided first accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth
Calculated its axial tilt and introduced concept of meridians and parallels
In his 3 volume Geographika (now lost) he mapped the known world and classified it into climatic zones
Strabo (64BCE-~CE24): compiled 17 volume Geographica largely from existing sources; survived into the Renaissance world. An early appreciation of sea-level change
Ptolemy (100-178): a Greco-Egyptian who wrote 8 volume Geography, which included a mathematical description of the Earth, a volume of maps,and the calculation of latitude and longitude (basis of European maps for the next 1400 years!)
The Muslim World (7th to 14th CE)
Preserved writings of the Greek and Roman worlds
Al-Idrisi (1099-1180) produced a descriptive geography to assist pilgrimages
Significant contributions to mathematical geography and specialist treatments of topics such as climate
Christian Geography of the Middle Ages (c. 1300)
Early descriptive accounts to aid pilgrims
Geographies based on scripture
Encyclopedias documenting places and features
As much about explaining the divine order of things (both physical and societal) as their manifestation on earth
Up to the 15th century, Europeans still reliant on Classical Geography
Ptolemy’s Geographia translated from Greek to Latin in 1407 (left 1482)
Map based on calculations(not always correct)
Medieval map makers made more “important” countries bigger
Not appropriate for navigation
European map making changed after this
Age of (European) Discovery
European exploration of Africa, Asia and Americas from the early 15th to the 16th century
Later European exploration of Australia and New Zealand and interior of North America through 18th century
Primary economic/political driver for acquiring knowledge about the physical geography of colonies, and potential colonies (of course leaving a colonial legacy across the globe)
The birth of modern Physical Geography:The Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reason) (~early 17th– early 19th century) in Europe characterised by a shift from traditional (religious) authority to rationality and analysis
cartesian geometry, powers and superscript, law of refraction
1637 René Descartes – “Je pense, donc je suis”(Discourse on the Method)
The birth of modern Physical Geography:The Age of Enlightenment
“the rise of individual autonomy over traditional community, the rise of secularizing reason over inherited authority, the disengagement of nature from a supernatural worldview...the rise of science as both technique and worldview..” (Shea and Huff,1995)
James Cook’s first entry into the Pacific in 1769 a key moment in the scientific study of the subject matter of Physical Geography
Remember the impact that this colonialism has had on the world –cannot be ignored
Alexander von Humboldt
Expedition to South and Central America, 1799-1804
Enormous range of observations and measurements relevant to physical geography as well as meteorology, volcanology and geophysics, but especially to biogeography
Many publications, including the 5 volume Kosmos
Charles Darwin
Voyage of the ‘Beagle’ (1831-1836): explaining the formation of coral atolls
Founded what became the Met Office
William Morris Davis
Building on Hutton, Lyell, Powell etc
Cycles of uplift and denudation repeated – Old,Mature, Young landscapes
Later critiques focus on the desire to classify rather than explain process
Davis was a founder (and president) of the Association of American Geographers in 1904
Friedrich Ratzel
Developed concept of the organic state applying analogy of organic expansion to geopolitics; created term lebensraum ‘living space’.
His major work Anthropogeographie focused on effect of environmental factors on human history and culture and society.
Lebensraum – human activities and societies are influenced by physical geography – humans/species that adapt to one location will naturally migrate/spread to another – a natural feature of all species. Nazi’s used this to justify expansion to the Eastern Europe
Ellen Churchill Semple
Studied under Ratzel and presented his ideas on environmental influences on human society to an Anglophone audience. Argued that environmental rather than social factors influence culture.
Although her work was categorised as environmental determinism, she denied a straightforward effect of the physical environment on human society