Glacken, Clarence (1909–89)

Clarence james glacken (1909–89) was a prominent cultural geographer and a key scholar in the development of environmental history. His work in bio-historical studies during the mid-20th century ranks him with Carl Ortwin Sauer and Rachel Carson. Glacken's seminal work is his Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1967). In this book, Glacken contends that there have been three archetypal questions posed through time about the earth and human relationships with it: Is the earth the creation of a higher power? Has the earth's physical attributes (landforms, climates, the arrangement of its landmasses and water bodies) influenced both the social nature of its human occupants and the nature of human ...