Facts on Geography.

Geography discovery continued for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks saw the poet Homer as the founder of geography, but geography existed long before Homer was born. Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. These forms of literature or pieces of prose dealt with a large amount of geographical information. Homer believed that the world was circular ringed by a single massive ocean. The works show that the Greeks by the 8th century B.C. knew a great deal about their surroundings (including the eastern Mediterranean). The poems contained a large number of place names and descriptions. Many of these names are uncertain about their real locations. Thales of Miletus was one of the first known philosophers to have wondered about the shape of the world. He said that the world was based on water, and that all things grew out of it.  He also mentioned that many of the astronomical and mathematical rules that would allow geography to be studied scientifically. His successor was Anaximander. Anaximander was the first person to have attempted to create a scale map of the known world to the Greeks and to have introduced the gnomon to Ancient Greece. Hecataeus of Miletus created a different form of geography. He didn't deal with the mathematical calculations of Thales and Anaximander. He learned about the world by getting previous works and speaking to the sailors who came through the busy port of Miletus. From these accounts, Hecataeus created a detailed prose account about his region. Herodotus’ Histories is a work of history. It showed geographic descriptions of Egypt, Scythia, Persia, and Asia Minor. It also mentioned India. There is a description of Africa. He said that the land was surrounded by a sea. 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 he 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 an eclipse is curved, 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. The Hellenistic period saw more geographical researchers. Hanno the Navigator came into Sierra Leone in Africa. Other Phoenicians possibly circumnavigated Africa. This was during the 4th century B.C. when the Greek explorer Pytheas traveled into northeast Europe and circles the British Isles.  He found many more people in those lands than expected. There were Julius Caesar’s invasions of Britain and Germany. Augustus had expeditions to Arabia Felix and Ethiopia (or Nubia). Alexander the Great traveled as far as Iran and India with his army. Many geographers and writers were with him to observe what they saw.
The ancient Greeks divided the world into three continents, Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa). 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 (to the ancient Greeks), as was the northern portion of Europe and Asia, so it was believed that they were circled by a sea. The ancient Greeks tried to find the size of the Earth. Eratosthenes tried to calculate the Earth’s circumference by measuring the angle of the sun at two different locations. His numbers were problematic, but most of the errors cancelled themselves out. He got an accurate figure. 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. That some of the figures Eratosthenes had used in his calculation were considerably in error became known, and Posidonius set out to get a more accurate measurement. This number actually was considerably smaller than the real one, but it became accepted that the eastern part of Asia was not a huge distance from Europe. Many Roman geographers did their own research. Strabo had works on geography. Ptolemy did his own research. By the time of 90-168 A.D, the Silk Road was in existence. Ptolemy’s Geographia helped to open up the human understanding of the nature of geography. The ancient Romans used maps, transportation, and triangulation to develop research in geography. They had land surveyors, cartographic research, engineering surveyors, and military surveyors. Around 400 A.D., a scroll map called the Peutinger Table was made of the known world to the ancient Romans, featuring the Roman road network. Besides the Roman Empire which at that time spanned from Britain to the Middle East and Africa, the map includes India, Sri Lanka and China. Cities are demarcated using hundreds of symbols. It measures 1.12 ft. high and 22.15 ft. long. The tools and principles of geography used by the Romans would be closely followed with little practical improvement for the next 700 years.

Ancient Indian geographers had their own theories on the origin of the Earth. Some of them believed that the Earth was formed by the solidification of gaseous matter and the earth’s crust is made of hard rocks (sila), clay (bhuih), and sand (asma). Theories were also propounded to explain earthquakes (bhukamp), and it was assumed that earth, air and water combined to cause earthquakes. The Arthashastra, a compendium by Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) contains a range of geographical and statistical information about the various regions of India. The composers of the Puranas divided the known world into seven continents of dwipas, Jambu Dwipa, Krauncha Dwipa, Kusha Dwipa, Plaksha Dwipa, Pushkara Dwipa, Shaka Dwipa and Shalmali Dwipa. Descriptions were provided for the climate and geography of each of the dwipas. The Vishnudharmottara Purana (compiled between 300–350 AD) contains six chapters on physical and human geography. It describes peoples, places, and seasons. Varahamihira's Brihat-Samhita gave a thorough treatment of planetary movements, rainfall, clouds and the formation of water. The mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata gave a precise estimate of the earth's circumference in his treatise Āryabhaṭīya. Aryabhata accurately calculated the Earth's circumference as 24,835 miles, which was only 0.2% smaller than the actual value of 24,902 miles. The Mughal chronicles Tuzuk-i-Jehangiri, Ain-i-Akbari and Dastur-ul-aml contained detailed geographical narratives. These were based on the earlier geographical works of India and the advances made by medieval Muslim geographers, particularly the work of Alberuni. 

Ancient Chinese geographers were abundant back then. They existed in the 5th century B.C. during the start of the Warring States period (481 B.C. – 221 B.C.). There was the work called the Yu Gong ('Tribute of Yu') chapter of the Shu Jing or Book of Documents, which describes the traditional nine provinces of ancient China, their kinds of soil, their characteristic products and economic goods, their tributary goods, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes listed and placed accordingly. The nine provinces at the time of this geographical work were relativity small in size compared to those of modern China. The book described areas of the Yellow River (including the lower valleys of the Yangtze and the plain between them as well as the Shandong peninsula. It shows area of the west and the most northern parts of the Wei and Han Rivers along the southern parts of modern day Shanxi province). The state of Zin by the 4th century B.C. had many maps. The writings of cartographer Pei Xiu (224-271) referred to thew geometric grid and mathematically graduated scale to a map. Chinese historical texts have a geographical section. The ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu (32–92) most likely started the trend of the gazetteer in China, which became prominent in the Northern and Southern dynasties period and Sui dynasty. Local gazetteers would feature a wealth of geographic information, although its cartographic aspects were not as highly professional as the maps created by professional cartographers. Maps developed by the actions of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu. Geographic literature became more complex with the existence of the Song dynasty (60-1279) and the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The Song dynasty poet, scholar, and government official Fan Chengda (1126–1193) wrote the geographical treatise known as the Gui Hai Yu Heng Chi. It focused primarily on the topography of the land, along with the agricultural, economic and commercial products of each region in China's southern provinces. The polymath Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) devoted a significant amount of his written work to geography, as well as a hypothesis of land formation (geomorphology) due to the evidence of marine fossils found far inland, along with bamboo fossils found underground in a region far from where bamboo was suitable to grow.

Chinese researchers discovered geographic areas outside of China. The traveler Zhang Qian (from the 2nd century B.C.) wrote about civilizations in the Middle East, India, and Central Asia. By the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Chinese diplomat Wang Xuance came into northeastern India in a place called Magadha. He wrote about India in his 7th century book Zhang Tian-zhu Guo Tu (the Illustrated Accounts of Central India). It had geographic information. Jia Dan (730-805) wrote about Iran and the Persian Gulf. Byzantine scholars wrote about geography like Stephanus of Byzantium (in the 6th century) called Ethnica. Muslims of Arabic and Persian descent were geographers too. Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber or Jabir) (721– c. 815) wrote extensively on many subjects, expanded on the wisdom of the Greek classics and engaged in experimentation in natural science. It is unclear whether he was Persian or Syrian.

In mathematical geography, Persian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, around 1025, was the first to describe a polar equi-azimuthal equidistant projection of the celestial sphere. He was also regarded as the most skilled when it came to mapping cities and measuring the distances between them, which he did for many cities in the Middle East and western Indian subcontinent. He combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations to record degrees of latitude and longitude and to measure the heights of mountains and depths of valleys, recorded in The Chronology of the Ancient Nations. He discussed human geography and the planetary habitability of the Earth, suggesting that roughly a quarter of the Earth's surface is habitable by humans. He solved a complex geodesic equation in order to accurately compute the Earth's circumference. His estimate of 6,339.9 km for the Earth radius was only 16.8 km less than the modern value of 6,356.7 km. By Medieval times, Marco Polo came into China. Many European explorers like Henry the Navigator of Portugal traveled into the African coast and studied geographic information. The Columbian exchange, the evil slave trade, and other events of colonialism continued to exist by the late Middle Ages to the early Modern Age. Geographic studies evolved from the time of the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation. The problem with some European geographic scholars back then was that many of them had Eurocentric biases that made them ignore non-European methods in studying geography. Alexander von Humboldt studied geography all of the time. The National Geographic Society was founded in the United States in 1888 and began publication of the National Geographic magazine which became and continues to be a great popularizer of geographic information. The society has long supported geographic research and education. By the 20th century, environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography existed. Now, the study of geography has been grown by advanced technology, research, study, and other aspects of our human experiences.

By Timothy