Geography

**Geography**, from the Greek *geographia*, literally "Earth-writing," is a field of science encompassing the study, analysis, and knowledgable application of the relative locations of physical or human structures on Earth. Geography is essential to understanding the human history of earth, but it is also useful for understanding the geological history and future of the earth. Geography covers a wide range of academic subjects, including physical, environmental, meteorological, social, human, political, and historical geography, as well as the fields of cartography, geodesy, geology, and, to a great extent, history.

Geography's ultimate goal is 100% accurate historical and modern-day knowledge of the Earth's physical and political structures, landmarks, and regions. Unfortunately, a 1:1 scale map of the earth would be far too large and complicated to properly use and too difficult to ever create. Ultimately, therefore, geography wants to accurately display, to scale, the relations of objects and locations to each other. And not only in the present; historical geography, sometimes called paleogeography, applies geography's concepts to history, enabling geographers to create mostly-accurate maps of history, even as early as the dawn of civilization.

Geography as an academic discipline is rarely covered to an acceptable degree in primary and secondary education, especially in the West. In the United States, students will often find that they don't know enough geographic concepts to make more than a mental map of their route to work or school. Numerous studies have shown that Western students often fail to locate well-known countries on the map; according to Yahoo News, only 25 percent of American students passed their geography test in 2011. And the problem is further exacerbated by the US Department of Education having no dedicated curriculum for the study of geography.

## Etymology

The term "*γεωγραφία*" (transliterated to English as *geographia*) was first used by Erastothenes in his scientific book *Geographika*, which has since been lost to time. The Greek term literally means "Earth-writing."

## History

As long as humans have been rational enough to study their surroundings, there has been the study of geography. While the earliest known maps were created on clay tablets by the Babylonians in the 9th century BC, there is little doubt that maps had been created before, even if they were simply drawn in the dust of the ground to show how to get from point A to point B. The Imago Mundi is the world's oldest-well-preserved world map, created sometime around 600 BC.

Anaximander was the first real geographer in history, inventing the gnomon, which was also an integral part of a sundial. While little of his ideas survive, they did travel down through philosophy to others like Erastothenes and Pythagoras. Thales is credited with the prediction of eclipses. Hipparchus invented the latitude-longitude grid system, which was expanded and improved upon by Ptolemy.

Chinese exploration of geography began very early, though they did not overtake Western practices in skill and precision until the 3rd century AD. A number of Chinese geographers, such as Pei Xiu, Jia Dan, and Fan Chengda, wrote important treatises that were only superseded by the arrival of Western culture and science in the 17th century and onwards.

While geography was mainly a science of the Greeks and later Romans (at least in Europe), the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Islam marked a shift in the geographical center of the world from Greece and Rome back to Mesopotamia, where Baghdad quickly became a center of geographic excellence. Muhammad al-Idrisi, perhaps the best-known Muslim geographer in the Classical World, produced such maps as the Tabula Rogeriana, which was one of the most advanced medieval maps created. The Grand Library of Baghdad was the epicenter of much of Muslim geography from its founding after 762 AD until its destruction by the Ilkhanate in 1258.

The Age of Discovery made previous geographical ideas and improvements obsolete, as it became imperative to understand exactly where countries, borders, coastlines, and islands sat. The main problems in cross-Atlantic surveying included marine longitude, solved by John Harrison, and the placement of the prime meridian, which was set in stone by the International Meridian Conference as the Greenwich Meridian. As geography became an ever more important aspect of academics and science, figures such as Alexander von Humbolt, Carl Ritter, and Paul Vidal de la Blache rose to prominence. Surveying was perfected by the Cassini family in France and by the Royal Survey in England. Primarily using triangulation to complete lines before filling in the details, Surveying was eventually used in America, India, Peru, Australia, and China, among others, to learn the exact position of locations and cities that had long been misplaced. As well, many legendary places, such as El Dorado or Prester John's Kingdom, disappeared off the map as they were never found.

In the modern era, the invention of computers has given rise to geographic information systems, which can hold far more information than a simple map could and have far more detail as well. Airplanes allow geographers to create detailed topographic maps easily, while high-tech sonar is used to penetrate the dark abysses of the deep ocean. Satellites take amazingly detailed images of the Earth constantly, relaying the data to hundreds of scientific and geographical stations around the world. Some satellites even orbit other planets, giving us valuable data from Mars, Venus, and various moons as to how they were formed.

## References

1. ↑ Yahoo News, Only 25 percent of American students passed their geography test. 20 July 2011. https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/only-25-percent-american-students-passed-geography-test-160214355.html