History of geography
The history of geography includes many histories of geography which have differed over time and between different cultural and political groups. In more recent developments, geography has become a distinct academic discipline. 'Geography' derives from the Greek γεωγραφία – geographia, literally "Earth-writing", that is, description or writing about the Earth. The first person to use the word geography was Eratosthenes. However, there is evidence for recognizable practices of geography, such as cartography, prior to the use of the term.
Egypt
The known world of Ancient Egypt saw the Nile as the center, and the world as based upon "the" river. Various oasis were known to the east and west, and were considered locations of various gods. To the South lay the Kushitic region, known as far as the 4th cataract. Punt was a region south along the shores of the Red Sea. Various Asiatic peoples were known as Retenu, Kanaan, Que, Harranu, or Khatti. At various times especially in the Late Bronze Age Egyptians had diplomatic and trade relationships with Babylonia and Elam. The Mediterranean was called "the Great Green" and was believed to be part of a world encircling ocean. Europe was unknown although may have become part of the Egyptian world view in Phoenician times. To the west of Asia lay the realms of Keftiu, possibly Crete, and Mycenae.Babylon
The oldest known world maps date back to ancient Babylon from the 9th century BC. The best known Babylonian world map, however, is the Imago Mundi of 600 BC. The map as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger shows Babylon on the Euphrates, surrounded by a circular landmass showing Assyria, Urartu and several cities, in turn surrounded by a "bitter river", with seven islands arranged around it so as to form a seven-pointed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the encircling ocean. The descriptions of five of them have survived.In contrast to the Imago Mundi, an earlier Babylonian world map dating back to the 9th century BC depicted Babylon as being further north from the center of the world, though it is not certain what that center was supposed to represent.
Greco-Roman world
The ancient Greeks viewed Homer as the founder of geography. His works the Iliad and the Odyssey are works of literature, but both contain a great deal of geographical information. Homer describes a circular world ringed by a single massive ocean. The works show that the Greeks by the 8th century BC had considerable knowledge of the geography of the eastern Mediterranean. The poems contain a large number of place names and descriptions, but for many of these it is uncertain what real location, if any, is actually being referred to.Thales of Miletus is one of the first known philosophers known to have wondered about the shape of the world. He proposed that the world was based on water, and that all things grew out of it. He also laid down many of the astronomical and mathematical rules that would allow geography to be studied scientifically. His successor Anaximander is the first person known to have attempted to create a scale map of the known world and to have introduced the gnomon to Ancient Greece.
Hecataeus of Miletus initiated a different form of geography, avoiding the mathematical calculations of Thales and Anaximander he learnt about the world by gathering previous works and speaking to the sailors who came through the busy port of Miletus. From these accounts he wrote a detailed prose account of what was known of the world. A similar work, and one that mostly survives today, is Herodotus' Histories. While primarily a work of history, the book contains a wealth of geographic descriptions covering much of the known world. Egypt, Scythia, Persia, and Asia Minor are all described, including a mention of India. The description of Africa as a whole are contentious, with Herodotus describing the land surrounded by a sea. Though he described the Phoenicians as having circumnavigated Africa in the 6th century BC, through much of later European history the Indian Ocean was thought to be an inland sea, the southern part of Africa wrapping around in the south to connect with the eastern part of Asia. This was not completely abandoned by Western cartographers until the circumnavigation of Africa by Vasco da Gama. Some, though, hold that the descriptions of areas such as India are mostly imaginary. Regardless, Herodotus made important observations about geography. He is the first to have noted the process by which large rivers, such as the Nile, build up deltas, and is also the first recorded as observing that winds tend to blow from colder regions to warmer ones.
Pythagoras was perhaps the first to propose a spherical world, arguing that the sphere was the most perfect form. This idea was embraced by Plato, and Aristotle presented empirical evidence to verify this. He noted that the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse is curved from any angle, and also that stars increase in height as one moves north. Eudoxus of Cnidus used the idea of a sphere to explain how the sun created differing climatic zones based on latitude. This led the Greeks to believe in a division of the world into five regions. At each of the poles was an uncharitably cold region. While extrapolating from the heat of the Sahara it was deduced that the area around the equator was unbearably hot. Between these extreme regions both the northern and southern hemispheres had a temperate belt suitable for human habitation.
Hellenistic period
These theories clashed with the evidence of explorers, however, Hanno the Navigator had traveled as far south as Sierra Leone, and Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II of Africa is related by Herodotus and others as having commissioned a successful circumnavigation of Africa by Phoenician sailors. While they were sailing west around the Southern tip of Africa, it was found that the Sun was to their right. This is thought to have been a key trigger in the realization that the Earth is spherical, in the classical world.In the 4th century BC the Greek explorer Pytheas traveled through northeast Europe, and circled the British Isles. He found that the region was considerably more habitable than theory expected, but his discoveries were largely dismissed by his contemporaries because of this. Conquerors also carried out exploration, for example, Caesar's invasions of Britain and Germany, expeditions/invasions sent by Augustus to Arabia Felix and Ethiopia, and perhaps the greatest Ancient Greek explorer of all, Alexander the Great, who deliberately set out to learn more about the east through his military expeditions and so took a large number of geographers and writers with his army who recorded their observations as they moved east.
The ancient Greeks divided the world into three continents, Europe, Asia, and Libya. The Hellespont formed the border between Europe and Asia. The border between Asia and Libya was generally considered to be the Nile river, but some geographers, such as Herodotus objected to this. Herodotus argued that there was no difference between the people on the east and west sides of the Nile, and that the Red Sea was a better border. The relatively narrow habitable band was considered to run from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to an unknown sea somewhere east of India in the east. The southern portion of Africa was unknown, as was the northern portion of Europe and Asia, so it was believed that they were circled by a sea. These areas were generally considered uninhabitable.
The size of the Earth was an important question to the Ancient Greeks. Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference with great precision. Since the distance from the Atlantic to India was roughly known, this raised the important question of what was in the vast region east of Asia and to the west of Europe. Crates of Mallus proposed that there were in fact four inhabitable land masses, two in each hemisphere. In Rome a large globe was created depicting this world. Posidonius set out to get a measurement, but his number actually was considerably smaller than the real one, yet it became accepted that the eastern part of Asia was not a huge distance from Europe.
Roman period
While the works of almost all earlier geographers have been lost, many of them are partially known through quotations found in Strabo. Strabo's seventeen volume work of geography is almost completely extant, and is one of the most important sources of information on classical geography. Strabo accepted the narrow band of habitation theory, and rejected the accounts of Hanno and Pytheas as fables. None of Strabo's maps survive, but his detailed descriptions give a clear picture of the status of geographical knowledge of the time. Pliny the Elder's Natural History also has sections on geography. A century after Strabo Ptolemy launched a similar undertaking. By this time the Roman Empire had expanded through much of Europe, and previously unknown areas such as the British Isles had been explored. The Silk Road was also in operation, and for the first time knowledge of the far east began to be known. Ptolemy's Geographia opens with a theoretical discussion about the nature and techniques of geographical inquiry, and then moves to detailed descriptions of much the known world. Ptolemy lists a huge number of cities, tribes, and sites and places them in the world. It is uncertain what Ptolemy's names correspond to in the modern world, and a vast amount of scholarship has gone into trying to link Ptolemaic descriptions to known locations.It was the Romans who made far more extensive practical use of geography and maps. The Roman transportation system, consisting of of roads, could not have been designed without the use of geographical systems of measurement and triangulation. The cursus publicus, a department of the Roman government devoted to transportation, employed full-time gromatici. The surveyors' job was to gather topographical information and then to determine the straightest possible route where a road might be built. Instruments and principles used included sun dials for determining direction, theodolites for measuring horizontal angles, and triangulation without which the creation of perfectly straight stretches, some as long as, would have been impossible. During the Greco-Roman era, those who performed geographical work could be divided into four categories:
- Land surveyors determined the exact dimensions of a particular area such as a field, dividing the land into plots for distribution, or laying out the streets in a town.
- Cartographical surveyors made maps, involving finding latitudes, longitudes and elevations.
- Military surveyors were called upon to determine such information as the width of a river an army would need to cross.
- Engineering surveyors investigated terrain in order to prepare the way for roads, canals, aqueducts, tunnels and mines.
The tools and principles of geography used by the Romans would be closely followed with little practical improvement for the next 700 years.