World Cultural Geography - Essay Example

WORLD CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY (Space and Human Behaviors) GEO 201 (Spring of (affiliation) Location of University: Professors Name: March 04, 2014 Estimated word count: 1,600 (text only) Introduction The study of geography has many important implications and practical uses. However, in early history or before the advent of the modern times, geography was used for many different ends, depending on the time period and the objectives of the rulers of a particular place. In this regard, there was effectively no exact definition of geography as it is known today. Geography is formally defined as the academic and scientific study of the land and its features and inhabitants. As a distinct field of study, geography is considered as a quite late development in the new era of the modern times, starting with the Industrial Revolution, the rise of capitalism, and expansion of Western countries through imperialism and colonialism of newly-discovered territories. People living in a certain area or geographic location, are to a large extent influenced by the land they occupy. Inhabitants of a certain place may be darker in skin color due to the heat of the Sun if they are living near the Equator or of whiter skin if they lived farther up north or down south, away from the heat of the tropical Sun. Their livelihoods are also determined by the place of residence as these places contain various natural resources from which the people can obtain their sustenance, depending on their proximity to these natural resources and their access to the said resources. The development of agriculture, for instance, is largely determined by the place because the climate, soil, and topography determine what crops can be grown or not. Geography, topography, and cartography can be combined and the resulting knowledge is of great importance to its end users. This paper briefly examines and discusses the phases that the study of geography has gone through over the ages. It posits the idea that geography and people are intertwined in the sense one influences the other in self-reinforcing manners often overlooked nor examined more thoroughly for their political and economic implications. Discussion The early or prehistoric humans were severely limited in their movements due to the need to find food sources such as animals and certain edible plants based on their proximity to these food sources. Primitive people were originally hunters and gatherers so their social behavior was to a large extent determined or influenced by the geographic area in which they live or operated. Space was for them a big factor in making a decision whether to stay in one place or move to a new place that offers more chances for survival and more favorable factors for raising a family. It can be said at this period in human history that space or geography shaped human behavior as the early humans were quite constrained in their ability to transform their environment. They can only survive within an area if the space they lived in provided enough resources for sustenance. This kind of arrangement in which humans were at the mercy of the environment probably had existed for several millennia until such time when Man acquired the ability to use tools. Geography underwent several phases of development or progression, beginning with the so-called unrecorded and informal pre-geography, then through a formal pre-geography, and on to the formal geography in which geographic knowledge acquired and accumulated throughout the ages are now formally recorded and accepted by the society producing it as having utility to justify its preservation (Unwin, 1992) and for teaching it to subsequent generations. In other words, people and societies acquired geographic knowledge initially informally only through the travels of some adventurous members of the group who came back safely and told the tale to the remaining members of their tribe. This geographic knowledge also applied to what seafarers learned about new lands when they embarked on ocean-crossing voyages. The travels of pre-literate people gave vital information for subsequent explorations (Rumsey & Weiner, 2001). The geographic knowledge of these pre-literate people can be classified into the first group (informal pre-geography) for purposes of securing food supplies by knowing the routes to these supplies, be able to access them and to return safely back home. The ancient Greeks and the early Romans belong to the second category (formal pre-geography) in which the knowledge can be further classified into three sub-groups which are topographic (descriptions of the Earth and the people, plants, and animals living in it), astronomical and mathematical concerned with finding the correct or exact measurement of the Earth (perhaps to improve astronomy and the art of divination or predicting oracles, and also to aid in the planting of crops or raising of animals in terms of weather patterns as manifested by the Earth’s rotation or predict floods and high tides), and lastly, for mystical and philosophical purposes (or theological traditions to help explain the role of Man in the entire Universe and the very purpose for human existence on Earth) which could be considered as the driving forces for improving geographic knowledge (Unwin, 1992). Geography at around this time was used mainly for utilitarian purposes such as military conquests, expansion of territory to acquire new resources (such as precious metals and taxation purposes, for example), and for trade and commerce to flourish through establishment of safer routes for traders’ travelling caravans which were the only means by which to carry out trade with distant lands (Chandra, 1977). Territorial expansion through military conquests had greatly expanded geographic knowledge and at the same time made this knowledge more accurate. The ancient Greeks in Homer’s time used geography and combined it with astronomy to create the new art of astrology to predict human behavior and natural events like disasters or calamities as exemplified by the myth of a lost continent, Atlantis, which is prominent in Greek mythology. In various times in history, the use of geography varied considerably, depending on the rulers. Plato (427-347 B.C.E.) was the first to mention ever of its possible existence as a moral lesson for all leaders of the various Greek city-states not to follow the example of Atlantis where its leaders were autocratic and very cruel to their own subjects. Although accuracy was improved by military conquests of Alexander the Great, its level of accuracy still left much to be desired. A key improvement at around this time was the growing adoption of the Earth as a sphere or globe compared to the Ptolemic geographic knowledge of the Earth as a flat circular surface. Inaccuracies in an incomplete geographic knowledge confounded both the historians and academicians alike as there is no way to determine whether Atlantis is historical fact or just only a legend or myth although an advanced Minoan civilization existed on the Greek island of Crete at around the second millennium B.C.E. but got destroyed by a huge Thera volcanic eruption or known as the Santorini volcanic catastrophe (Balch, 1917) and followed by a tsunami. As knowledge of geography improved, its purpose shifted likeduring the Medieval period as people lost knowledge of their acquired geography of known lands because of chaos and pestilence. The Islamic world through the efforts of the Arabs was able to preserve its geographic knowledge and used this knowledge to advance climate science, using horizontal bands starting at the equator to determine the climate of a particular area, each bandwidth measured by the length of the day at summer solstice, and classified the world to seven different climates, based on the weather and seasons (Meri & Bacharach, 2006). The Arabs made important connections between geography and the economy of the people in the area, on their health and culture, in effect the first proponents of the idea of “human geography” (Gregory et al., 2011; Massey, 1984) and its significance to a moderate climatic temperature as conducive to development of the right kind of morality and promotion of religion, based on their own practical experiences. Geography facilitated imperialism (Bell, Butlin, & Hefferman, 1995) and this coincided with the rise of imperialism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the West acquired territories by military conquests. The knowledge of geography became paramount to advance Western interests when capitalism as the new paradigm reached its highest form by the rise of monopolies and finance capital (Hudson, 1972). The pursuit of profits was greatly aided by geography as foreign markets opened in the colonies of Africa, Asia, America, and elsewhere. Geography of imperialism was needed for capitalism to survive, as Lenin noted (Smith, 2008). Geography served the aims of imperialism very nicely because it enabled the Western powers to explore new territories, how to carve these up among themselves, and how best to use or exploit the natural resources within these newly-discovered lands. Geographic knowledge had also allowed these imperialist countries to impose their own cultures on the subjugated people in the colonies, resulting in racial discrimination and economic marginalization to the natives. Conclusion As human civilization progressed and technical inventions and innovations enabled Man to master his environment, Man and Nature influenced each other in a cyclical or self-reinforcing manner; no longer was Man subjected to the vagaries of Nature. However, climate change today has altered the environment beyond the control of Man, to a certain extent, as floods and droughts are now more frequent and more severe, sea levels are rising due to ice melt, and a new class of refugees had risen, the climate change evacuees whose food supplies are now threatened. The ancient Chinese were experts at geography as they developed the compass for navigation; this knowledge was extended to modern usage like in gyroscopes used for airplanes and space shuttles, and in very precise global positioning systems or GPS used extensively today. References Balch, E. S. (1917, May). Atlantis or Minoan Crete. Geographic Review 3(5), 388-392. Bell, M., Butlin, R. A., & Hefferman, M. J. (1995). Geography and imperialism: 1820-1940. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Chandra, M. (1977). Trade and trade routes in ancient India. Delhi, India. Abhinav Publications. Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M., & Whatmore, S. (2011). The dictionary of human geography. Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. Hudson, B. (1972). The new geography and new imperialism: 1870-1918. Antipode 9(2), 12-19. Massey, D. B. (1984). Geography matters! A reader. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Meri, J. W. (Ed.) & Bacharach, J. L. (2006). Medieval Islamic civilization (Vol. 1). New York, NY, USA: Routledge Rumsey, A. & Weiner, J. F. (2001). Emplaced myth: Space, narrative, and knowledge in aboriginal Australia and Papua New Guinea. Honolulu, HI, USA: University of Hawaii Press. Smith, N. (2008). Uneven development: Nature, capital, and the production of space. Athens, GA, USA: University of Georgia Press. Unwin, T. (1992). The place of geography. New York, NY, USA: Routledge. Read More