History of Geography

Premodern Geographies

Prior to the rise of modern Western capitalism, geography had roots that extended to classical Greece in the sixth century. In general, premodern geographies were empirical and inductive in nature, often consisting of encyclopedic compilations of place descriptions. Geography was a practical science often intertwined with geodesy, astronomy, surveying, exploration, trade, and military conquest. Classical Greece, from which Western culture ostensibly arose (but with numerous connections to older cultures), marked the first systematic attempts to describe the shape of the earth and map the known world (or the ecumene). For example, Thales (611–547 BC), who lived in Miletus, theorized that the earth floated on water and successfully predicted an eclipse on May 28, 585 BC. Anaximander (610–546 BC) constructed what might have been the first map of the world (since lost), invented the gnomon, and argued that the earth and all bodies were spherical. Herodotus (485–425 BC) was a historian who coupled history with geography in his famous studies of the Nile River. During the Athenian golden age, Aristotle (384–322 BC), a scientist and philosopher, theorized a geocentric astronomical system that held sway until the 17th century. He also advocated an early form of climatic determinism based on three belts of temperature and their ability to sustain civilization; that to the south of Greece was too hot and that to the north was too cold, leaving Greece alone ideal for civilization. At the famous library of Alexandria, Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) coined the term geography and estimated the circumference of the earth remarkably accurately. Later, Hipparchus (190–120 BC) theorized a grid about the world consisting of latitude and longitude lines.

Among the Romans, prominent geographers included Strabo (64 BC–24 AD), who was actually Greek and is best known for his 17-volume work Geography. Ptolemy (87–150 AD), also working in Alexandria, concluded that the task of geography is to describe the earth as a whole, and he did just that in his 8-volume Guide to Geography. He differentiated between geography (the study of universals) and topography (the study of localities) and defined chorography as integrating the two.

For a millennium under feudal Europe, geography suffered from the political and ideological dominance of theology. Exploration during this time was relatively rare, excluding perhaps the Vikings and the famous trips to Asia by Marco Polo. A well-known medieval geographic expression consisted of T-in-O maps, oriented to the east (i.e., Jerusalem), which depicted the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia in crude, highly inaccurate terms.

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