Geographic principles: Babylon and Egypt

The first surviving human remains that would indicate an interest in terrestrial knowledge is a medium-scale map known as an Akkadian map, found at Nuzi and dated to around the 23rd century BC. C.. The map is oriented towards the east (cardinal point) "East (cardinal point)") and geographical features such as water courses, human settlements and mountains can be identified.[4]​.

The Bedolina map, a famous rock of prehistoric origin that is part of the Val Camonica rock complex (in the Italian Alps, today part of the Seradina-Bedolina archaeological park, in Capo di Ponte, in the Lombardy region), is a petroglyph recognized as one of the oldest topographic maps, the oldest figures apparently being engraved at the end of the Bronze Age (3000-1000 BC). C.).[5]​ It is the oldest representation of a human settlement.[6]​.

The oldest known maps describing the Earth (mapa mundi) in Babylon date back to around the century BC. C..[7]​ But the best-known map among these finds is the Imago Mundi[8]​ dated to around 400-600 BC. C. and discovered in Iraq in 1899. The map, as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger, shows the city of Babylon bordered by the Euphrates River with a circular land mass representing Assyria, Urartu[9] and other nearby cities surrounded by a "river of bitter water" (ocean), in addition to seven islands arranged around it forming a seven-armed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the circular ocean, with the names of five of them still visible.[10] In contrast to the earlier, oldest map from the century BC. C. Babylon is represented as the center of the world, in the previous one it is located further north, although it is not known exactly what that center would represent on the map.

Another map, this time on a large scale, represents a small territory of the Nippur district, showing a canal, a moat, houses and a park. The plan "Plan (cartography)") is dated to the century BC. C..

Large-scale maps (plan representing a garden from the century BC) and cosmological maps (around 350 BC) have also been found in Egypt.

Geography of Greece and Rome

Greek culture is the first to develop organized knowledge about a set of phenomena that concern, in a broad sense, the Earth. This description of the Earth, since ancient times, has been understood in two ways: either as a description and study of the entire Earth as a physical and celestial body, or as a description and study of some of its territories, including both its physical characteristics (rivers, mountains...) and the peoples that inhabited them. Thus, since classical Greece, there has been a general perspective and a particular or regional perspective, the first closer to mathematics, astronomy and cartography and the second to history, politics and what is understood today as ethnography.

It is in Miletus where knowledge that could be described as geographical begins to be systematized and treated in a more methodical and rational way. The voyages or descriptions of the coasts made by sailors become a fundamental source of knowledge. Anaximander of Miletus (610-547 BC) probably produced one of the first maps of the world known to the Greeks, in addition to several calculations on the equinoxes and solstices. Hecataeus of Miletus (between the centuries and before our era) improved Anaximander's map and wrote about the coasts and towns that bordered the Mediterranean. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484-425 BC) made several trips that brought him closer to the ends of the world known to the Greeks. In his History he describes in great detail territories such as Egypt, Persia or Asia Minor.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275-194 BC) is properly considered the “father of geography”, as he was the first to coin the term, applying it to one of his works (Hympomnemata geographica). For Eratosthenes this term identified the essential objective of his work, the development of a graphic representation of the known world, that is, what is understood today as cartography. He started from the search for the dimensions of the Earth, a task he carried out with surprising approximation. Strabo (60 BC - 21 AD) instead created a fully chorographic or regional geography. Strabo systematically collects a large amount of accumulated information about the various territories of the ecumene. His works had a clear practical purpose because he was interested, above all, “for the purposes of government.” Strabo identified the different territories and characterized them according to their physical, ethnic and economic features. Along these same lines, Pomponio Mela (century BC) produced his work Chorographia where he recounts various trips along the known coasts of the time, describing the physical and human characteristics of the various territories.

Claudius Ptolemy (90-168 AD), astronomer and mathematician, also produced a geographical work, Geographike hyphegesis. This work is situated in the tradition of mathematical and cartographic geography. It provided position tables that allowed a map of the Earth to be made based on the longitude "Longitude (cartography)") and latitude of places. He also made calculations about the size of the Earth.

India

A vast corpus of Indian texts encompassed the study of geography. The Vedas and Puranas contain elaborate descriptions of rivers and mountains and discuss the relationship between physical and human elements.[11] According to religious scholar Diana Eck), a notable feature of geography in India is its interweaving with Hindu mythology.

Geographers of ancient India proposed theories about the origin of the earth. They theorized that the earth would have been formed by the solidification of gaseous matter and that the earth's crust would be composed of hard rocks (sila), clay (bhumih) and sand (asma).[13] Theories were also proposed to explain earthquakes (bhukamp) and it was assumed that earth, air and water combined to cause earthquakes.[13] The Arthashastra, a compendium of Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) contains a variety of geographical and statistical information about the various regions of India.[11] 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 of the climate and geography of each of the dwipas were provided.[13]​.

The Vishnudharmottara Purana (compiled between 300 and 350 AD) contains six chapters on physical and human geography. The locational attributes of towns and places, and the various seasons, are the subjects of these chapters.[11] Varahamihira's Brihat-Samhita gave a comprehensive treatment of planetary movements, of rain, clouds and the formation of water.[13] The mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata gave an accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth in his treatise Aryabhatiya.[11] Aryabhata accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth as , which is only 0.2% smaller than the current value of .

The Mughal chronicles of Tuzuk-i-Jehangiri, Ain-i-Akbari and Dastur-ul-aml contain detailed geographical narratives.[11] These were based on the earlier geographical works of India and the advances made by medieval Muslim geographers, particularly the work of Alberuni.

China

In China, the oldest known writings on Chinese geography date back to the century BC. C., during the beginning of the Warring States period (481 BC - 221 BC).[15] This work was the chapter Yu Gong ('Yu's Tribute') of the Shu Jing or Classic of Documents, which describes the traditional nine provinces&action=edit&redlink=1 "Nine provinces (China) (not yet written)") of ancient China, their soil types, their products characteristics and economic assets, their tributary assets, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes enumerated and placed accordingly.[15] The nine provinces at the time of that geographical work were relatively small in size compared to those of modern China, and the book's descriptions pertained to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangtze and the plain between them, as well as the Shandong Peninsula and, to the west, the most north of the Wei and Han rivers, along with the southern parts of present-day Shanxi province.[15]​.

In this ancient geographical treatise, which would greatly influence later Chinese geographers and cartographers, the Chinese used the mythological figure of Yu the Great to describe the known land (of the Chinese). Apart from the appearance of Yu, however, the work lacked magic, fantasy, Chinese folklore or legend.[16] Although Chinese geographical writing in the time of Herodotus and Strabo was of lower quality and contained a less systematic approach, this would change from the century onwards, as Chinese methods of documenting geography became more complex than those found in Europe, a state of affairs that would persist into the 17th century.[17]

The first extant maps found in archaeological sites in China date back to the century BC. C. and were made in the ancient Qin state.[18]​ The first known reference to the application of a geometric grid and a mathematically graduated scale to a map is found in the writings of the cartographer Pei Xiu") (224-271).[19]​ From the century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section, which was often a huge compilation of changes in place names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, of river systems, of taxable products, etc.[20]​ The ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu (32-92) probably started the gazetteer trend in China, which became prominent in the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui dynasty.[21]​ Local gazetteers would include a great deal of geographical information, although their cartographic aspects were not as professional as maps created by cartographers. professionals.[21]​.

From the time of the Shu Jing") of the century BC onwards, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and fewer legendary elements. This example can be seen in chapter 4 of the [Book of the Master of Huainan], compiled under the direction of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of the topography in a systematic, with visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu. 150.[23] The work [Classical Waterways] was written anonymously in the 17th century during the era of the Three Kingdoms (often attributed to Guo Pu), and gave a description of some 137 rivers found throughout China.[24] In the 19th century, the book was enlarged to forty times its original size by geographers Li Daoyuan"), given the new title of [Annotated classical waterways].[24]​.

Byzantine Empire and Syria

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople and known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to prosper and produced several notable geographers. Stephen of Byzantium (1st century) was a grammarian in Constantinople and author of the important geographical dictionary Ethnica. This work is of enormous value as it provides well-referenced geographical and other information on ancient Greece.

The geographer Hierocles "Hierocles (author of Synecdemus)") (1st century) was the author of the Synecdemus (before 535 AD) in which he provides a table of the administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists the cities in each of them. The Synecdemus and the Ethnica were the main sources of Constantine VII's work on the themas or divisions of Byzantium, De Administrando Imperio, and are the main sources preserved today on the political geography of the 19th-century East.

George of Cyprus is known for his Descriptio orbis Romani [Description of the Roman World], written in the decade 600-610.[29] Beginning with Italy and progressing counterclockwise, including Africa, Egypt, and the western Middle East, George lists cities, towns, fortresses, and administrative divisions of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.

Cosmas Indicopleustes (1st century), also known as Cosmas the Monk, was an Alexandrian merchant[30] who, according to records of his travels, appears to have visited India, Sri Lanka, the kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Included in his work Christian Topography are some of the earliest maps of the world.[31][32][33] Although Cosmas believed that the earth was flat, most Christian geographers of his time disagreed with him.[34]​.

The Syrian bishop James of Edessa (633-708) adapted scientific material from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Ptolemy, and Basil to develop a carefully structured picture of the cosmos. He corrected his sources and wrote in a more scientific manner, while Basil's Hexaemeron is theological in style.[35]​.

The German Hellenist philologist Karl Müller has collected and printed several anonymous works of geography from this period, including Expositio totius mundi")..

Islamic world

At the end of the century, adherents of the new religion of Islam surged into northern Arabia and took over the lands where Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Persian Zoroastrians had settled for centuries. There, carefully preserved in the monasteries and libraries, they discovered the Greek classics, which included great works of geography by the Egyptian Ptolemy Almagest and Geography, along with the geographical wisdom of China and the great achievements of the Roman Empire. The needs of government and active trade within the Arab territories facilitated the collection of new geographical data. These data were synthesized by great travelers such as Ibn Batuta or Ibn Khaldùn. The Arabs, who spoke only Arabic language, they employed Christians and Jews to translate these and many other manuscripts into Arabic (see: Greco-Arabic Translation Movement).

The major geographic scholarship of this era occurred in Persia, modern-day Iran, at the great center of learning at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, modern-day Iraq. The early caliphs did not follow orthodoxy and therefore encouraged scholarship.[36]​ Under their rule, non-Arab natives served as mawali or dhimmi,[37]​ and most geographers in this period were Syrian (Byzantine) or Persian, that is, of Zoroastrian or Christian origin.

At the beginning of the century, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (850-934), a Persian originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of land cartography in Baghdad. Geographers of this school also wrote extensively about the peoples, products and customs of areas of the Muslim world, with little interest in non-Muslim kingdoms. the mountains in The Book of Healing (1027).

In mathematical geography, the Persian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973–1052), around 1025, was the first to describe an equiazimuthal polar projection equidistant from the celestial sphere.[39] He was also considered 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 the western Indian subcontinent. He combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations to record degrees of latitude and longitude and measure the altitudes of mountains and the depths of valleys, recorded in The Chronology of Ancient Nations. He discussed human geography and the Earth's planetary habitability, suggesting that approximately a quarter of the Earth's surface was habitable by humans. He solved a complex geodetic equation in order to accurately calculate the circumference of the Earth.[40] His estimate of for the Earth's radius was only less than the modern value of .

Other Persian authors who wrote about geography or created maps during the Middle Ages were:.

• - Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber or Jabir) (721- c. 815) wrote extensively on many topics, expanded the wisdom of the Greek classics, and devoted himself to experimentation in the natural sciences. It is not clear whether he was Persian or Syrian.[41]​.

• - Al-Khwārizmī") (780-850) wrote The Image of the Earth (Kitab surat al-ard), in which he used Ptolemy's Geography "Geography (Ptolemy)") but improved its values ​​for the Mediterranean Sea, Asia and Africa.

• - Ibn Khurdadhbih") (820-912) was the author of a book of administrative geography, Book of Routes and Provinces (Kitab al-masalik wa'l-mamalik), which is the oldest surviving Arabic work of its kind. He made the first four-sector quadratic scheme map.

• - Sohrab or Sorkhab[42]​ (d. 930) wrote Wonders of the Seven Climates to the End of the Habitation describing and illustrating a rectangular grid of latitude and longitude for "Longitude (cartography)") to produce a map of the world.[43][44]​.

• - Al-Istakhri") (died 957) compiled the Book of the Routes of States (Kitab Masalik al-Mamalik) from personal observations and literary sources.

• - Abu Nasr Mansur (960-1036) known for his work with the law of sine") spherical. His Book of Azimuths no longer exists.

• - Avicenna (980-1037) wrote about the earth sciences in his Book of Healing.

• - Ibn al-Faqih (1st century) wrote the Concise Book of Lands (Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan).

• - Ibn Rustah (1st century) wrote a geographical compendium known as Book of Precious Records.

At the beginning of the century, the Normans had overthrown the Arabs in Sicily. Palermo had become a crossroads for travelers and merchants from many nations and the Norman king Roger II, with great interest in geography, commissioned the creation of a book and a map that would compile all this wealth of geographical information. Researchers were sent and the data collection took 15 years.[45] Al-Idrisi (1099-1180), one of the few Arabs who had ever been to France and England, as well as Spain, Central Asia and Constantinople, was used to create the The Book of Roger where from that amount of data he gathered a large amount of information about the known lands and about various places, capitals and cities. Using information inherited from classical geographers, he created one of the most accurate maps of the world to date, the Tabula Rogeriana (1154). The map, written in Arabic, shows the entire Eurasian continent and the northern part of Africa.

A supporter of environmental determinism was the medieval Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz (776-869), who explained how the environment could determine the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of a given community. He used his early theory of evolution to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed was the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in northern Najd as evidence for his theory.[46]

medieval Europe

During the Early Middle Ages, geographical knowledge in European societies was practically interrupted with the decline and disappearance of the Roman Empire. (Although it is a widespread misconception that they thought the world was flat), a religious cosmography dominated in which the Earth was represented as a circular disk and the continents (Africa, Europe and Asia) were arranged centrally in Jerusalem and the simple T in O Map became the standard representation of the world.

The voyages of the Venetian explorer Marco Polo through the Mongol Empire in the 20th century, the Christian Crusades of the 20th century, and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration during the 20th century opened new horizons and stimulated geographical writings.

The Mongols also had extensive knowledge of the geography of Europe and Asia, based on their governance and control of much of this area, and they used that information to conduct large military expeditions. Evidence for this is found in historical resources such as The Secret History of the Mongols and other Persian chronicles written in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, a map of the world was created during the rule of the Great Yuan Dynasty and is currently preserved in South Korea. (See also: Maps of the Yuan Dynasty.)

During the 19th century, Henry the Navigator of Portugal supported explorations of the African coast and became a leader in promoting geographical studies. Among the most notable accounts of travel and discovery published during the century were those of Giambattista Ramusio in Venice, Richard Hakluyt in England, and Theodore de Bry in what is now Belgium.

Contenido

Este período de la historia de la geografía concierne a la era histórica de la Edad Moderna.

En 1406, Jacobo d'Angelo completó la traducción latina de la Geografía "Geografía (Ptolomeo)") de Ptolomeo a partir de una copia obtenida en Bizancio. Los escritos de Ptolomeo y sus sucesores islámicos proporcionaron un plan sistemático para organizar y representar la información geográfica. En 1410, el cardenal Pierre d'Ailly escribió el Imago Mundi, que se imprimirá en 1478. Cristóbal Colón tenía una copia.

En 1475, las tablas ptolemaicas de coordenadas estaban disponibles y permitían la construcción de mapas. La invención de la imprenta permitió su amplia distribución. Hay cinco ediciones de estas tablas hasta 1486.

El uso de la brújula transmitida por los árabes va a permitir la navegación en alta mar. Con la estimación del curso y de la distancia entre dos puertos con el uso de la corredera, será posible trazar, a partir del siglo , un nuevo tipo de cartas para ayudar a la navegación, los portulanos. Destacará la escuela cartográfica mallorquina, donde hubo varios cartógrafos judíos.

Para sortear las tierras de los musulmanes y prescindir del monopolio del comercio con Oriente de Venecia, el Portugal de Enrique el Navegante lanzará expediciones de descubrimiento. Los portugueses buscarán llegar a India y China mediante la organización de viajes de circunnavegación de África liderados por Vasco da Gama. Los españoles, gracias a Cristóbal Colón, buscarán llegar a China por la ruta occidental cruzando el océano Atlántico, cuya longitud había subestimado. Magallanes propuso dar la vuelta al mundo por Sudamérica y descubrió el océano Pacífico, Jacques Cartier realizó su primer viaje a Canadá en 1534. A mediados del siglo , François Xavier") inició el inicio de la evangelización de Japón.

En los siglos y , las grandes expediciones") marítimas aumentaron enormemente el conocimiento del planeta. Esas expediciones estuvieron acompañadas de una escrupulosa actividad de observación astronómica y geográfica. El conocimiento cartográfico aumenta, tanto por la cantidad de nuevos conocimientos aportados por las exploraciones, con la amplia difusión de documentos gracias a la imprenta, como por los nuevos métodos y sólidos fundamentos teóricos (proyección de Mercator en el siglo ).

La cartografía terrestre también progresará bajo la presión de los cambios en la sociedad. La transición desde la sociedad feudal a la sociedad moderna con el desarrollo del derecho romano y el derecho de propiedad de la tierra requerirá la medición de la tierra y el desarrollo del catastro. La afirmación de los poderes de los soberanos europeos los llevará a querer medir sus dominios. Al mismo tiempo, el desarrollo de la trigonometría y la aparición de la plancheta para medir ángulos, permitirá mejorar los levantamientos topográficos. Los mapas del mundo de la Geographica Generalis de Bernhardus Varenius y los de Gerardus Mercator dan testimonio de la nueva generación de geógrafos.

En Italia, Giovanni Botero publicó en Roma, de 1591 a 1592, los tres volúmenes de las Relazioni Universali que marcaron el nacimiento de la estadística o ciencia descriptiva del Estado. Se trataba de una geografía aplicada a las necesidades de las nuevas administraciones.

El cartógrafo otomano Piri Reis creó mapas de navegación que expuso en Kitab-ı Bahriye. El trabajo comprende un atlas de mapas de pequeñas partes del Mediterráneo, junto con información sobre el mar. En la segunda versión del trabajo, incluyó un mapa de las Américas.[47]​.

Hasta el siglo , los términos geógrafo o cartógrafo se usaban indistintamente. Pero, al mismo tiempo que aumentaban su conocimiento geográfico, los viajeros comenzarán a interesarse por la historia natural que nutrirá el conocimiento de la Tierra. Los descubrimientos científicos darán a los geógrafos nuevos instrumentos: el termómetro inventado por Galileo en 1597, el barómetro por Evangelista Torricelli en 1643. El desarrollo del espíritu científico hará desaparecer gradualmente las interpretaciones teológicas de los fenómenos naturales.

Tras los viajes de Marco Polo, el interés por la geografía se extendió por toda Europa. Alrededor de c. 1400, los escritos de Ptolomeo y sus sucesores proporcionaron un marco sistemático para unir y representar la información geográfica. Este marco fue utilizado por los académicos durante los siglos venideros, siendo los aspectos positivos el período previo a la iluminación geográfica; sin embargo, las mujeres y los escritos indígenas fueron en gran medida excluidos del discurso. Las conquistas globales europeas comenzaron a principios del siglo con las primeras expediciones portuguesas a África e India, así como la conquista de América por España en 1492 y continuaron con una serie de expediciones navales europeas a través del Atlántico y más tarde el Pacífico y expediciones rusas a Siberia hasta el siglo .

La expansión europea en ultramar llevó al surgimiento de los imperios coloniales, con el contacto entre el «Viejo» y el «Nuevo Mundo» produciendo el intercambio colombino: una amplia transferencia de plantas, animales, alimentos, poblaciones (incluyendo esclavos), enfermedades transmisibles y cultura entre los continentes. Estos esfuerzos colonialistas en los siglos y revivieron el deseo de una mayor precisión de los detalles geográficos y de unos fundamentos teóricos más sólidos.

El mapa de Waldseemüller Universalis Cosmographia, creado por el cartógrafo alemán Martin Waldseemüller en abril de 1507, fue el primer mapa de las Américas en el que se menciona el nombre «América». Antes de esto, los nativos americanos se referían a su tierra dependiendo de su ubicación, siendo uno de los términos más utilizados «Abya Yala», que significa 'tierra de sangre vital'. Estos discursos geográficos indígenas fueron en gran parte ignorados o apropiados por los colonialistas europeos para dar paso al pensamiento europeo.

El mapa eurocéntrico se diseñó a partir de una modificación de la segunda proyección de Ptolomeo, pero se amplió para incluir las Américas.[48]​ El mapa de Waldseemuller se ha denominado «certificado de nacimiento de Américass».[49]​ Waldseemüller también creó mapas impresos denominados globos terráqueos, que se podían recortar y pegar en esferas que daban como resultado un globo. Esto ha sido ampliamente debatido por despreciar la extensa historia de los nativos americanos que precedió a la invasión del siglo , en el sentido de que la implicación de un "certificado de nacimiento" implica una historia previa en blanco.

16th - 18th centuries in the West

Geography as a science experiences enthusiasm and exerts influence during the Scientific Revolution and Religious Reformation. In the Victorian period, overseas exploration gave institutional identity and geography was "the science of imperialism par excellence."[50] Imperialism is a crucial concept for Europeans, as the institution became involved in geographical exploration and the colonial project. Authority was questioned and utility gained importance. In the age of Enlightenment, geography generated knowledge and made it intellectually and practically possible as a university discipline. Natural theology required geography to investigate the world as a great machine of the Divine. Scientific voyages and voyages built geopolitical power from geographical knowledge, partly sponsored by the Royal Society. John Pinkerton") evaluated that the century had "the gigantic progress of all the sciences, and in particular of geographical information" and "there has been an alteration in states and borders."

The discourse of geographical history gave rise to many new theories and thoughts, but the hegemony of European male scholarship led to the exclusion of non-Western theories, observations, and knowledge. An example is the interaction between humans and nature, with Marxist thought criticizing nature as another commodity within capitalism, European thought seeing nature as an idealized or objective concept that differs from human society, and Native American discourse, which sees nature and humans as within one category. The implicit hierarchy of knowledge that was perpetuated across these institutions has only recently been challenged, with the Royal Geographical Society allowing women to join as members in the 20th century.

After the English Civil War, Samuel Hartlib and his Baconian community promoted scientific application, which showed the popularity of the utility. For William Petty, administrators needed to be “skilled in the best rules of judicial astrology” to “calculate the events of disease and forecast the weather.” Institutionally, Gresham College" spread scientific advancement to a wider audience as merchants, and that institute later became the Royal Society. William Cuningham") illustrated the utilitarian function of cosmography through the military implement of maps. John Dee used mathematics to study location, his main interest in geography, and encouraged the exploitation of resources with finds collected during travels. The Religious Reformation stimulated geographical exploration and research. Philipp Melanchthon changed the production of geographical knowledge from “pages of scriptures” to “experience in the world.” Bartholomäus Keckerman") separated geography from theology because the "general workings of providence" required empirical investigation. His follower, Bernhardus Varenius, made geography a science in the century and published Geographia Generalis, a text that was used in Newton's teaching of geography at Cambridge.

18th century

In the 19th century, James Cook and La Pérouse explored the Pacific area.

Through his writings, Jean-Jacques Rousseau will promote the rehabilitation of field experience as a source of education and geographical knowledge. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi created schools applying Rousseau's ideas especially for the teaching of geography. The two geographers Carl Ritter and Élisée Reclus were trained in the Pestalozzian schools.

In the 19th century, geography began to emerge as a scientific discipline. But it was not until the century that it took a real place in teaching in France. In the 19th century, geography was recognized as a discipline in its own right and was part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially in Paris and Berlin), but not in the United Kingdom, where geography is generally taught as a subdiscipline of other fields.

Background of modern geography

The first half of the century will be fundamental for the development of modern geography and for its university institutionalization. Several authors have pointed out various conditions of possibility in its development:

• - Exploration trips that provided a wealth of new data and experiences.

• - European colonial expansion, closely linked to geographical societies that popularized geographical knowledge and created a social state of favorable opinion towards geography.

• - The development of nationalism, which will give the discipline a social and political function linked to the consolidation of national sentiment.

• - The elaboration of conceptual projects for geography developed by Humboldt and Ritter.

• - The recognition of geography as a school discipline that will lead to the creation of geography chairs to train teachers.

For some authors (such as H. Capel) this last condition is the main factor in the development of geography at the end of the century.

Alexander de Humboldt (1769-1859) will later be claimed as one of the founders of modern geography, although it is doubtful that he considered himself a geographer. Humboldt intended to found what he himself calls the "physical description of the Earth", that is, what is understood today as an integrated physical geography. A discipline capable of integrating the different elements of the natural world. This project will be reflected in his great work Cosmos.

Carl Ritter (1779-1859) for his part will outline a very different project. Ritter held a position as professor of geography at the University of Berlin from 1820 until his death. His main work, General Comparative Geography, consisted of 21 volumes with a huge amount of information. For Ritter, the objective of scientific geography is "the organization of space on the earth's surface and its role in the historical development (of man)", a project that was situated within the framework of the German intellectual tradition of the philosophy of history developed by Herder and Hegel.

The work of both authors, although having great importance and exerting a strong subsequent influence on many geographers, did not have continuity over time. Authors such as Paul Claval") have pointed out the strong decline that geographical research experienced between the death of these two great intellectuals in 1859 and the 1870s when multiple chairs of geography began to be created in Germany.

Institutionalization of geography

Germany is where geography will experience a strong boost, mainly associated with primary and secondary education. In 1870 there were only three geography chairs in this country. However, by 1890, practically all German universities had specialized teaching in geography thanks to the decision of the Prussian Ministry of Education. In this regard, Germany will set up a true model for Europe, especially for France. The chairs will be occupied by scholars with diverse backgrounds. For example, Ferdinand von Richthofen was a prestigious geologist, as was Oscar Peschel. Friedrich Ratzel was a pharmacist by training and a zoologist by his later work. Adolf Kirchoff was a historian and philologist.

In France the institutionalization of geography will follow in the footsteps of Germany. However, geography in France will be developed mainly by historians such as Paul Vidal de La Blache, Bertrand Auerbach") or Émile Berlioux").

In Great Britain, university institutionalization will be later with strong opposition from geologists and historians. In this process, the Royal Geographical Society played a fundamental role, offering the universities of Oxford and Cambridge financial aid for the creation of teaching positions. Halford Mackinder, a historian by training, will occupy the position at the University of Oxford, achieving great popularity. Francis Henry Hill Guillemard, doctor and zoologist, will do it for Cambridge.

Scientific geography project: physical geography and anthropogeography

Modern geography does not therefore emerge as a formed and defined discipline. The various proposals that appear to delimit the field of geography are not coincident or shared, a fact that continues to the present day. At first, the scientific geography that is developed in German universities begins to be defined above all as physical geography and more specifically as physiography or geomorphology. The work of the German geologists and geographers, Richthofen, Peschel and Penck will be fundamental in this line. In fact, F. von Richthofen will be the first to define geography as the science of the Earth's surface, thereby eliminating from modern geography the pre-institutional topics of astronomical geography, mathematical geography and cartography. Likewise, geography stopped being the science that studies the entire planet, to focus on its surface.

However, it will be the project of F. Ratzel (1844-1904) that will achieve greater significance and diffusion. Ratzel, within the framework of positivism at the end of the century and greatly influenced by the work of Darwin, Haeckel and Ritter, proposed a discipline focused on the influences of the physical environment on man, which he called Anthropogeography (1882). It will be a bridge discipline between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a naturalistic explanation of social facts focused on studying the nature of societies and their differences and on describing the diffusion of cultural traits and the migratory movements of human groups. In short, Ratzel's Anthropogeography attempted to find the natural causes of human events.

The success of this proposal for geography will be quite great, at least initially. He influenced both French geography through J. Brunhes and Vidal de la Blache and English geography through H. Mackinder and above all in the nascent American geography, until then fundamentally physical and developed by scientists with naturalistic training such as William Morris Davis or R.Salisbury"), through a direct disciple of Ratzel, Ellen Churchill Semple.

In France, Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), a disciple of Ritter, produced a deeply personal and popular work, but which paradoxically did not obtain recognition from official French institutions nor would it have continuity until its rediscovery by radical geographers in the 1970s. From an anarchist ethic, Reclus would focus on the relationships between human groups and the natural environment, on "recognizing the intimate bond that brings together the succession of "human events and the action of telluric forces."

Classical geography: regions and landscapes

In the last decades of the century, a reaction against positivism and naturalism begins to emerge. In geography this coincides with a strong criticism of the, until then, successful environmental ideas coming from authors such as F. Ratzel. The conceptual separation between nature and spirit and, correlatively, between natural sciences and social sciences is accentuated. This affected the core of the geographical formulation as a bridge science focused on man-environment relationships.

As an alternative, a new geography begins to take shape that will have region and landscape as its central concepts. The concrete (idiographic") character of geography is affirmed in the face of the generalizing (nomothetic") pretensions of environmentalism and historicist explanations and inductivism as a method of knowledge gain greater strength. The protagonists of this true conceptual transformation will be Alfred Hettner in Germany, Paul Vidal de la Blache and Lucien Febvre in France and, later, Carl Sauer and Richard Hartshorne in the United States, where the environmentalist tradition had greater roots.

However, regional geography and landscape geography were configured independently and, in part, in opposition. It can be said that while environmental geography configured a science-relationship focused on the interaction between human groups and the physical environment; Regional geography configured a science-method (geography as a point of view). Landscape geography would instead be developed in a more orthodox way, as an object-science (the landscape as a material product or reflection of a human group).

Alfred Hettner (1859-1941) is the one who shapes regional geography in a more systematic way. For Hettner, the study of the history of geography showed the existence of two concepts of this science. That of Erdkunde, that is, geography as general geography, and that of Landerkunde or regional or chorological approach. If it had previously been possible to accept geography as a general science of the Earth, the birth of disciplines such as geology, geophysics or geodesy made this formulation impossible, making the regional approach the only possible one. Likewise, Hettner criticized Richthofen's definition of geography as a science of the earth's surface, since "studies of the earth's surface as such, that is, without taking into account local differences, are not yet geographical." He also ruled out other possible visions of geography such as the proposal of a landscape science since "the homogeneity of geography [...] cannot, therefore, be based on the unity of landscape, but can only be established from the internal nature of regions, landscapes and localities." Nor was he in favor of understanding geography as a science of spatial distributions given that "the where of things is - like their when, local distribution and diffusion [...] - a characteristic, a quality of things or phenomena [...] and must necessarily be covered by the systematic sciences." Thus, for Hettner: "only when we conceive phenomena as properties of terrestrial spaces, will we be doing geography" and geography was, therefore, neither a natural science nor a social science, but both at the same time since "nature and man form an inseparable part of the characterization of regions." In the United States, R. Hartshorne (1899-1992) introduced, although late, Hettnerian ideas in his influential work (1939).

Institutionalization of geography in Spain

In Spain, the institutionalization of geography was considerably late compared to the most advanced European countries. This institutionalization did not really begin until after the civil war (1936-1939), although it is true that previously there were important geography scholars such as Pablo Vila or Gonzalo de Reparaz who saw their work interrupted by exile or for other reasons. The institutionalization of geography in the university was basically based on the fulfillment of two functions: the training of teachers for teaching and the role of ideological support of the regime.

The professors who will have a more prominent role in this process will be José Manuel Casas Torres, professor of geography at the University of Zaragoza from 1944 to 1966 and later professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, and Manuel de Terán Álvarez (1904-1984), professor of geography at the University of Madrid since 1951. We must also highlight the important work of the Elcano Institute of the CSIC (Superior Council of Scientific Research) created in 1940 and where what would be the most important geographical magazine in Spain, Estudios Geográficos, was published (and continues to be published).

Spanish geography will be strongly influenced by the ideas of French geography and to a lesser extent by those of German geography. This influence will be noticeable both in the conceptions of Spanish geography about the discipline itself and in the working methods. For Manuel de Terán: "the region, the geographical means, the complex or combination of surface facts, according to Allix's expression, the landscape, this is what assures geography of its autonomy and the criterion of certainty for any demarcation of fields and competencies with other Earth sciences." Spanish geographers will mostly accept, therefore, the ideas that geography is above all a regional-landscape science. Regional monographs will also be the method par excellence of the first Spanish geography.

Theoretical-quantitative geography

Beginning in the 1950s, geography experienced a profound crisis in the United Kingdom and the United States that led to the creation of the so-called theoretical-quantitative geography or simply "new geography." The emergence of this new geography coincides with similar trends of crisis and change in other disciplines, especially within the field of social sciences. The common basis of all these changes is the return to a philosophical neopositivism, that is, a single valid scientific method is claimed for all sciences regardless of their object of study, qualitative procedures are rejected over quantitative ones, emphasis is placed on the construction of models and the search for laws and a certain naturalistic and more specifically physicalist reductionism is advocated.

Within geography, a significant milestone will be the publication in 1953 of F. K. Schaefer's article "*Exceptionalism in Geography." Schaefer harshly attacked the regional conception, especially as expounded by R. Hartshorne. Faced with this conception, which he called exceptionalist because it focused on the only thing (the region, the landscape), Schaefer advocated for a standardized geography, in terms of methods, with the rest of the sciences, which had as its fundamental objective "the formulation of laws governing the spatial distribution of certain features on the earth's surface."

Other important milestones in the quantitative revolution will be the publication in 1962 of the work Theoretical Geography by William Bunge. By this date the new geography had developed quite a bit in the United States from the universities of Wisconsin (Madison "Madison (Wisconsin)") and Washington (Seattle), where important quantitative geographers such as Brian J.L. were trained. Berry") and Richard L. Morrill"). From the United States the movement soon spread to Great Britain and Sweden. In other countries such as France or Spain, where the regionalist and landscape conception had a strong influence, the reception of this new vision of geography and its methods was much later, since it lasted until the late 60s and early 70s and its influence was considerably lower. Quantitative geography will recover authors and works more or less forgotten or not previously taken into account by geography, such as Walter Christaller's Theory of Central Places (The Central Places in Southern Germany, 1933) or J. von Thünen (1783-1850) on the distribution of agricultural land uses.

But quantitative geography not only incorporated new methods and a new object of study (the explanation of the distribution of phenomena on the earth's surface) but also influenced the reformulation of the ecological tradition and the regional tradition that continued, therefore, being present in geographical work from these new positions and from traditional conceptions. Edward Ackerman in 1963 stated that the fundamental problem of geography was "nothing less than the understanding of the enormous system of interaction that comprises all humanity and its natural environment on the earth's surface", thus reaffirming, in a renewed way, a traditional field of study. Likewise, within physical geography, the usefulness of new concepts such as ecosystem, geosystem or landscape ecology is explored. The study of the region is also reconsidered. The concept of polarized or functional region appears, in close relation to the development of an economic subdiscipline, regional science. The region stops being considered a homogeneous landscape and begins to be characterized as a system of functional relationships, where its different elements and especially the regional metropolis, appear cohesive by flows of all kinds (of people, goods, capital, information...). In the field of urban geography, the influence of the Chicago school of human ecology led by Robert E. Park" will be noted, especially for its attention to intra-urban spatial organization (Ernest Burgess's concentric rings model).

Behavioral geography, radical geography and humanistic geography

During the 1960s, at the same time that the neopositivist vision of geography was imposed, the first criticisms of this vision of geography began to emerge and alternative proposals began to be outlined. The common axis of all criticism will be the acceptance, often not very reflective, of the neopositivist philosophy. Its excessive formalism, its physicalist reductionism and its obsession with searching for laws and constructing generalizing theories will be criticized. Criticism will begin to converge around three alternative currents: behavioral geography, radical geography, and humanistic geography.

From within the paradigm of quantitative geography itself, the psychological dimension of human agents is discovered and the insufficiency of the theoretical models developed to explain the location of activities and land uses is revealed. The problem of deviations between expected behaviors arises, according to existing economistic models (rational economic man) and real behaviors that necessarily respond to other variables. This whole theoretical movement led to a concern for human perception, mental maps, public images, etc.

Largely influenced by the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, geographers became deeply dissatisfied with the state of geography and its lack of concern for issues of social relevance. An important theorist such as David Harvey, author of the "new geography" manual Explanation in Geography (1969), will say in 1972 that "the quantitative revolution has run its course and apparently the results are less and less interesting" and that "our paradigm is not up to par. "It is ripe for an overthrow." Thus arises what will be called radical geography. This alternative geography aims to be committed and contribute to the revolutionary changes that society needs. It criticizes the alleged neutrality and scientism of quantitative geography and seeks new topics of study such as poverty and the poor, ghettos, urban living conditions (public services, housing crisis...), social well-being (through the geography of well-being), imperialism and neocolonialism, etc. A journal like Antipode: A radical Journal of Geography edited by Richard Peet will be fundamental in this entire renewal movement.

From a more theoretical level, radical geography will begin to introduce Marxism into geography. A Marxist geography very close to the social sciences is progressively configured. With great influences from French Marxist structuralism (Lefebvre, Althusser, Castells) space and the spatial configurations of social life will be defined as a social product, that is, as a social fact that must be understood within the framework of the corresponding social structures and therefore in the context of a geography understood as a social science. In France, the radical movement will also have its repercussions and will culminate in the creation, on the personal initiative of Yves Lacoste, of the geopolitical magazine (1976).

New regional geography and other emerging lines of research

Since the mid-1980s, there have been various proposals to renew regional geography, the former epicenter of geography. Already since the end of the seventies, D. Gregory") described as a vital task the revitalization of regional studies and the reformulation of the concept of region. In Gregory's own words: "We need to know something about the constitution of regional social formations, regional articulations and regional transformations." But these proposals for the recovery of regional geography are diverse. From those that simply propose a return to the classical geographical synthesis, to those that seek a new regional geography based on the framework of social sciences and social theory. In the latter perspective, the social construction nature of the regions is highlighted. The regions will no longer be permanent entities that the geographer is responsible for identifying and describing, but rather authentic socio-spatial formations that are constructed, change and can disappear. The influence of A.Giddens' theory of structuration on these new formulations will be quite marked.

Also during the 1980s and 1990s, new fields of geographical research emerged. Particularly noteworthy are the emergence of "gender" or feminist geography, "postcolonial studies", the new cultural geography and the revitalization of an ancient but long-marginalized geographical discipline, political geography.

Geography at the beginning of the 21st century

In this century, geography is presented as a broad and varied field with potential and also problems. After more than one hundred years of institutional development, geographers have not been able to agree on a common theoretical framework or general research objectives that integrate the development of the different geographical subdisciplines. Therefore, many theorists recognize that more than there being geography, there is in fact a set of geographical sciences, each with its own objects and methods. Dualisms and the traditional separation between general geography and regional geography as well as between physical geography and human geography persist. The various conceptions of geography coexist in research in an attitude of certain eclecticism. But, on the other hand, geography has undergone important changes in its modern history. There has been a great development of systematic geographies, totally new research topics have been delved into such as imperialism, socio-territorial inequality, the urbanization of rural spaces, environmental risks and impacts, etc. and new techniques and methods of great value have been incorporated (remote sensing, GIS, statistics, GPS.

Prominent geographers of the century and the beginning of the century include David Harvey, Milton Santos, Yves Lacoste, Paul Vidal de la Blache, Ellsworth Huntington, Walter Christaller, Halford John Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, Carl Sauer, Yi-Fu Tuan, Horacio Capel, Eduardo Martínez de Pisón, Mike Goodchild, Brian Berry, Peter Haggett, Anne Buttimer, Edward Soja, Ellen Churchill Semple, Paul Claval, Neil Smith and Doreen Massey.

Premodern Geography.

Ancient Geography: Greece, Rome and Egypt.

• - Anaximander of Miletus, made one of the first maps of the known world.

• - Hecataeus of Miletus, improved the previous map and described the coasts of the Mediterranean.

• - Herodotus of Halicarnassus, made several trips, where he made a description.

• - Eratosthenes coined the term "geography" and made the first measurements of the earth.

• - Strabo, focused on human aspects, history and myths.

• - Ptolemy, made a description of the world of his time, used a system of latitude and longitude, which served as an example for cartographers.

Geography of the Middle Ages.

• - Ibn Battuta.

• - Ibn Khaldun.

• - Al-Idrisi, gathered a large amount of information about the known lands and about various places, capitals and cities. He wrote The Book of Rogerio.

Geography from the 15th to 18th centuries.

• - Mercator, found new solutions to the problem of projecting the Earth's surface onto a flat surface. He was a builder and trader of globes.

• - Varenius, studied the causal connection of geographical facts in his General Geography.

Americo Vespucci.

The background of modern geography.

• - Humboldt made great contributions to physical geography that he captured in his work Cosmos.

• - Carl Ritter explained the relationships between the physical and human environment in his Comparative General Geography.

Modern Geography.

The institutionalization of geography.

Germany.

• - F. von Richothofen for whom Geology, Climate and Paleoclimate are determinants in Nature. He left his work Journey to China.

• - Friedrich Ratzel. Relates vital space and population in Anthropogeography.

France.

• - Paul Vidal de la Blache. He founded the magazine Annales de Geographie.

• - Bertrand Auerbach").

• - Émile Berlioux").

Great Britain.

• - Royal Geographical Society.

• - Halford John Mackinder. He introduced Geography into the British educational system.

The project of a scientific geography: physical geography and anthropogeography.

• - F. von Richothofen, defined geography as the science of the Earth's surface, thereby eliminating the topics of astronomical geography, mathematical geography and cartography. Likewise, geography stopped studying the entire planet, to focus on its surface.

• - Friedrich Ratzel, will propose a discipline focused on the influences of the physical environment on man, which he will call anthropogeography.

• - Élisée Reclus, will focus on the relationships between human groups and the natural environment, on “recognizing the intimate bond that brings together the succession of human events and the action of telluric forces.” He embraced anarchism and wrote "Geographie Universelle."

Classical geography: regions and landscapes.

• - Alfred Hettner, geography must address the differences located on the earth's surface, discovering spatial units, defining them and comparing them with each other, as expressed in the "Fundamentals of Regional Geography."

• - Paul Vidal de La Blache, the object of geography was the relationship between man and nature, from the perspective of the landscape, of the study of the region. Man is considered an active being, who suffers the influence of the environment, acting on it and transforming it, nature is considered as a set of possibilities for man's action.

• - Lucien Febvre, will be the introducer of the possibilist doctrine, that is, he will be in charge of highlighting the relative freedom of human groups against the physical environment. He wrote "Philip II and the Franco-County".

• - Jean Brunhes, who first incorporated the study of landscape into his work and the author of the first systematic manual of human geography. He was an expert in irrigation.

• - Carl O. Sauer, representative of the Californian school, saw geography as a science that studied the morphology of the landscape and especially the transformation of natural landscapes into cultural landscapes by the action of diverse cultures.

Theoretical-quantitative geography.

• - F. K. Schaefer"), advocated a geography whose fundamental objective was “the formulation of laws that govern the spatial distribution of certain characteristics on the earth's surface." In the work "Exceptionalism in Geography" (1953) he advocates methodological innovation based on the use of data.

• - William Bunge published "Theoretical Geography" (1962), the first book that systematized methodologies of quantitative spatial analysis and after a quantitative stage he discovered the social usefulness of Geography.

• - Brian Berry proposes the geographic data matrix (1964) which enables the application of multivariate analysis methods with the purpose of regionalization.

• - Walter Christaller, his main contribution to the discipline was the Theory of central places. He is a precursor of Territorial Planning.

• - J.von Thünen. He modeled the location of the crops.

• - Edward Augustus Ackerman.

The specific Epistemology of geography arises in a critical sense to explain the scientific and conceptual nature of geography; This describes how from human thought and the conscious appearance of the being, the real is perceived through the sensitive organs, giving rise to the recognition of the earth by man, which in this way allows a passage from nomadic to sedentary man when finding a need to find food, protection and clothing. Positions such as those of Francisco José de Caldas highlight that the constant change and advances in this science are appropriate to man's need to establish himself and recognize his territories.[51]​.

• - CAPEL, H.: Philosophy and Science in Contemporary Geography. Barcelona: Serbal, 2012 (1984). ISBN 978-84-7628-689-0.

• - GÓMEZ MENDOZA, J., MUÑOZ JIMÉNEZ, J. and ORTEGA CANTERO, N.: Geographical thinking. Interpretive study and anthology of texts (From Humboldt to radical tendencies). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988.

• - GONZÁLEZ FLORES, E.: The universe of geography. Madrid: Akal, 1991.

• - ORTEGA VALCÁRCEL, J.: The horizons of geography. Barcelona: Ariel Geografía, 2000.

• - UNWIN, T.: The place of Geography. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995.

• - Juan Vilá Valentí. The concepts of Geography and General Geography. In Vicente Bielza de Ory, Ed. General Geography I pp 13 - 23. Madrid: Santillana S. A., third edition 1993.

• - The History of Geography History with Maps.

Geographic principles: Babylon and Egypt

The first surviving human remains that would indicate an interest in terrestrial knowledge is a medium-scale map known as an Akkadian map, found at Nuzi and dated to around the 23rd century BC. C.. The map is oriented towards the east (cardinal point) "East (cardinal point)") and geographical features such as water courses, human settlements and mountains can be identified.[4]​.

The Bedolina map, a famous rock of prehistoric origin that is part of the Val Camonica rock complex (in the Italian Alps, today part of the Seradina-Bedolina archaeological park, in Capo di Ponte, in the Lombardy region), is a petroglyph recognized as one of the oldest topographic maps, the oldest figures apparently being engraved at the end of the Bronze Age (3000-1000 BC). C.).[5]​ It is the oldest representation of a human settlement.[6]​.

The oldest known maps describing the Earth (mapa mundi) in Babylon date back to around the century BC. C..[7]​ But the best-known map among these finds is the Imago Mundi[8]​ dated to around 400-600 BC. C. and discovered in Iraq in 1899. The map, as reconstructed by Eckhard Unger, shows the city of Babylon bordered by the Euphrates River with a circular land mass representing Assyria, Urartu[9] and other nearby cities surrounded by a "river of bitter water" (ocean), in addition to seven islands arranged around it forming a seven-armed star. The accompanying text mentions seven outer regions beyond the circular ocean, with the names of five of them still visible.[10] In contrast to the earlier, oldest map from the century BC. C. Babylon is represented as the center of the world, in the previous one it is located further north, although it is not known exactly what that center would represent on the map.

Another map, this time on a large scale, represents a small territory of the Nippur district, showing a canal, a moat, houses and a park. The plan "Plan (cartography)") is dated to the century BC. C..

Large-scale maps (plan representing a garden from the century BC) and cosmological maps (around 350 BC) have also been found in Egypt.

Geography of Greece and Rome

Greek culture is the first to develop organized knowledge about a set of phenomena that concern, in a broad sense, the Earth. This description of the Earth, since ancient times, has been understood in two ways: either as a description and study of the entire Earth as a physical and celestial body, or as a description and study of some of its territories, including both its physical characteristics (rivers, mountains...) and the peoples that inhabited them. Thus, since classical Greece, there has been a general perspective and a particular or regional perspective, the first closer to mathematics, astronomy and cartography and the second to history, politics and what is understood today as ethnography.

It is in Miletus where knowledge that could be described as geographical begins to be systematized and treated in a more methodical and rational way. The voyages or descriptions of the coasts made by sailors become a fundamental source of knowledge. Anaximander of Miletus (610-547 BC) probably produced one of the first maps of the world known to the Greeks, in addition to several calculations on the equinoxes and solstices. Hecataeus of Miletus (between the centuries and before our era) improved Anaximander's map and wrote about the coasts and towns that bordered the Mediterranean. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484-425 BC) made several trips that brought him closer to the ends of the world known to the Greeks. In his History he describes in great detail territories such as Egypt, Persia or Asia Minor.

Eratosthenes of Cyrene (275-194 BC) is properly considered the “father of geography”, as he was the first to coin the term, applying it to one of his works (Hympomnemata geographica). For Eratosthenes this term identified the essential objective of his work, the development of a graphic representation of the known world, that is, what is understood today as cartography. He started from the search for the dimensions of the Earth, a task he carried out with surprising approximation. Strabo (60 BC - 21 AD) instead created a fully chorographic or regional geography. Strabo systematically collects a large amount of accumulated information about the various territories of the ecumene. His works had a clear practical purpose because he was interested, above all, “for the purposes of government.” Strabo identified the different territories and characterized them according to their physical, ethnic and economic features. Along these same lines, Pomponio Mela (century BC) produced his work Chorographia where he recounts various trips along the known coasts of the time, describing the physical and human characteristics of the various territories.

Claudius Ptolemy (90-168 AD), astronomer and mathematician, also produced a geographical work, Geographike hyphegesis. This work is situated in the tradition of mathematical and cartographic geography. It provided position tables that allowed a map of the Earth to be made based on the longitude "Longitude (cartography)") and latitude of places. He also made calculations about the size of the Earth.

India

A vast corpus of Indian texts encompassed the study of geography. The Vedas and Puranas contain elaborate descriptions of rivers and mountains and discuss the relationship between physical and human elements.[11] According to religious scholar Diana Eck), a notable feature of geography in India is its interweaving with Hindu mythology.

Geographers of ancient India proposed theories about the origin of the earth. They theorized that the earth would have been formed by the solidification of gaseous matter and that the earth's crust would be composed of hard rocks (sila), clay (bhumih) and sand (asma).[13] Theories were also proposed to explain earthquakes (bhukamp) and it was assumed that earth, air and water combined to cause earthquakes.[13] The Arthashastra, a compendium of Kautilya (also known as Chanakya) contains a variety of geographical and statistical information about the various regions of India.[11] 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 of the climate and geography of each of the dwipas were provided.[13]​.

The Vishnudharmottara Purana (compiled between 300 and 350 AD) contains six chapters on physical and human geography. The locational attributes of towns and places, and the various seasons, are the subjects of these chapters.[11] Varahamihira's Brihat-Samhita gave a comprehensive treatment of planetary movements, of rain, clouds and the formation of water.[13] The mathematician-astronomer Aryabhata gave an accurate estimate of the circumference of the earth in his treatise Aryabhatiya.[11] Aryabhata accurately calculated the circumference of the Earth as , which is only 0.2% smaller than the current value of .

The Mughal chronicles of Tuzuk-i-Jehangiri, Ain-i-Akbari and Dastur-ul-aml contain detailed geographical narratives.[11] These were based on the earlier geographical works of India and the advances made by medieval Muslim geographers, particularly the work of Alberuni.

China

In China, the oldest known writings on Chinese geography date back to the century BC. C., during the beginning of the Warring States period (481 BC - 221 BC).[15] This work was the chapter Yu Gong ('Yu's Tribute') of the Shu Jing or Classic of Documents, which describes the traditional nine provinces&action=edit&redlink=1 "Nine provinces (China) (not yet written)") of ancient China, their soil types, their products characteristics and economic assets, their tributary assets, their trades and vocations, their state revenues and agricultural systems, and the various rivers and lakes enumerated and placed accordingly.[15] The nine provinces at the time of that geographical work were relatively small in size compared to those of modern China, and the book's descriptions pertained to areas of the Yellow River, the lower valleys of the Yangtze and the plain between them, as well as the Shandong Peninsula and, to the west, the most north of the Wei and Han rivers, along with the southern parts of present-day Shanxi province.[15]​.

In this ancient geographical treatise, which would greatly influence later Chinese geographers and cartographers, the Chinese used the mythological figure of Yu the Great to describe the known land (of the Chinese). Apart from the appearance of Yu, however, the work lacked magic, fantasy, Chinese folklore or legend.[16] Although Chinese geographical writing in the time of Herodotus and Strabo was of lower quality and contained a less systematic approach, this would change from the century onwards, as Chinese methods of documenting geography became more complex than those found in Europe, a state of affairs that would persist into the 17th century.[17]

The first extant maps found in archaeological sites in China date back to the century BC. C. and were made in the ancient Qin state.[18]​ The first known reference to the application of a geometric grid and a mathematically graduated scale to a map is found in the writings of the cartographer Pei Xiu") (224-271).[19]​ From the century AD onwards, official Chinese historical texts contained a geographical section, which was often a huge compilation of changes in place names and local administrative divisions controlled by the ruling dynasty, descriptions of mountain ranges, of river systems, of taxable products, etc.[20]​ The ancient Chinese historian Ban Gu (32-92) probably started the gazetteer trend in China, which became prominent in the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui dynasty.[21]​ Local gazetteers would include a great deal of geographical information, although their cartographic aspects were not as professional as maps created by cartographers. professionals.[21]​.

From the time of the Shu Jing") of the century BC onwards, Chinese geographical writing provided more concrete information and fewer legendary elements. This example can be seen in chapter 4 of the [Book of the Master of Huainan], compiled under the direction of Prince Liu An in 139 BC during the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 202 AD). The chapter gave general descriptions of the topography in a systematic, with visual aids by the use of maps (di tu) due to the efforts of Liu An and his associate Zuo Wu. 150.[23] The work [Classical Waterways] was written anonymously in the 17th century during the era of the Three Kingdoms (often attributed to Guo Pu), and gave a description of some 137 rivers found throughout China.[24] In the 19th century, the book was enlarged to forty times its original size by geographers Li Daoyuan"), given the new title of [Annotated classical waterways].[24]​.

Byzantine Empire and Syria

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, ruled from Constantinople and known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to prosper and produced several notable geographers. Stephen of Byzantium (1st century) was a grammarian in Constantinople and author of the important geographical dictionary Ethnica. This work is of enormous value as it provides well-referenced geographical and other information on ancient Greece.

The geographer Hierocles "Hierocles (author of Synecdemus)") (1st century) was the author of the Synecdemus (before 535 AD) in which he provides a table of the administrative divisions of the Byzantine Empire and lists the cities in each of them. The Synecdemus and the Ethnica were the main sources of Constantine VII's work on the themas or divisions of Byzantium, De Administrando Imperio, and are the main sources preserved today on the political geography of the 19th-century East.

George of Cyprus is known for his Descriptio orbis Romani [Description of the Roman World], written in the decade 600-610.[29] Beginning with Italy and progressing counterclockwise, including Africa, Egypt, and the western Middle East, George lists cities, towns, fortresses, and administrative divisions of the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.

Cosmas Indicopleustes (1st century), also known as Cosmas the Monk, was an Alexandrian merchant[30] who, according to records of his travels, appears to have visited India, Sri Lanka, the kingdom of Axum in modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Included in his work Christian Topography are some of the earliest maps of the world.[31][32][33] Although Cosmas believed that the earth was flat, most Christian geographers of his time disagreed with him.[34]​.

The Syrian bishop James of Edessa (633-708) adapted scientific material from Aristotle, Theophrastus, Ptolemy, and Basil to develop a carefully structured picture of the cosmos. He corrected his sources and wrote in a more scientific manner, while Basil's Hexaemeron is theological in style.[35]​.

The German Hellenist philologist Karl Müller has collected and printed several anonymous works of geography from this period, including Expositio totius mundi")..

Islamic world

At the end of the century, adherents of the new religion of Islam surged into northern Arabia and took over the lands where Jews, Byzantine Christians, and Persian Zoroastrians had settled for centuries. There, carefully preserved in the monasteries and libraries, they discovered the Greek classics, which included great works of geography by the Egyptian Ptolemy Almagest and Geography, along with the geographical wisdom of China and the great achievements of the Roman Empire. The needs of government and active trade within the Arab territories facilitated the collection of new geographical data. These data were synthesized by great travelers such as Ibn Batuta or Ibn Khaldùn. The Arabs, who spoke only Arabic language, they employed Christians and Jews to translate these and many other manuscripts into Arabic (see: Greco-Arabic Translation Movement).

The major geographic scholarship of this era occurred in Persia, modern-day Iran, at the great center of learning at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, modern-day Iraq. The early caliphs did not follow orthodoxy and therefore encouraged scholarship.[36]​ Under their rule, non-Arab natives served as mawali or dhimmi,[37]​ and most geographers in this period were Syrian (Byzantine) or Persian, that is, of Zoroastrian or Christian origin.

At the beginning of the century, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (850-934), a Persian originally from Balkh, founded the "Balkhī school" of land cartography in Baghdad. Geographers of this school also wrote extensively about the peoples, products and customs of areas of the Muslim world, with little interest in non-Muslim kingdoms. the mountains in The Book of Healing (1027).

In mathematical geography, the Persian Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973–1052), around 1025, was the first to describe an equiazimuthal polar projection equidistant from the celestial sphere.[39] He was also considered 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 the western Indian subcontinent. He combined astronomical readings and mathematical equations to record degrees of latitude and longitude and measure the altitudes of mountains and the depths of valleys, recorded in The Chronology of Ancient Nations. He discussed human geography and the Earth's planetary habitability, suggesting that approximately a quarter of the Earth's surface was habitable by humans. He solved a complex geodetic equation in order to accurately calculate the circumference of the Earth.[40] His estimate of for the Earth's radius was only less than the modern value of .

Other Persian authors who wrote about geography or created maps during the Middle Ages were:.

• - Jābir ibn Hayyān (Geber or Jabir) (721- c. 815) wrote extensively on many topics, expanded the wisdom of the Greek classics, and devoted himself to experimentation in the natural sciences. It is not clear whether he was Persian or Syrian.[41]​.

• - Al-Khwārizmī") (780-850) wrote The Image of the Earth (Kitab surat al-ard), in which he used Ptolemy's Geography "Geography (Ptolemy)") but improved its values ​​for the Mediterranean Sea, Asia and Africa.

• - Ibn Khurdadhbih") (820-912) was the author of a book of administrative geography, Book of Routes and Provinces (Kitab al-masalik wa'l-mamalik), which is the oldest surviving Arabic work of its kind. He made the first four-sector quadratic scheme map.

• - Sohrab or Sorkhab[42]​ (d. 930) wrote Wonders of the Seven Climates to the End of the Habitation describing and illustrating a rectangular grid of latitude and longitude for "Longitude (cartography)") to produce a map of the world.[43][44]​.

• - Al-Istakhri") (died 957) compiled the Book of the Routes of States (Kitab Masalik al-Mamalik) from personal observations and literary sources.

• - Abu Nasr Mansur (960-1036) known for his work with the law of sine") spherical. His Book of Azimuths no longer exists.

• - Avicenna (980-1037) wrote about the earth sciences in his Book of Healing.

• - Ibn al-Faqih (1st century) wrote the Concise Book of Lands (Mukhtasar Kitab al-Buldan).

• - Ibn Rustah (1st century) wrote a geographical compendium known as Book of Precious Records.

At the beginning of the century, the Normans had overthrown the Arabs in Sicily. Palermo had become a crossroads for travelers and merchants from many nations and the Norman king Roger II, with great interest in geography, commissioned the creation of a book and a map that would compile all this wealth of geographical information. Researchers were sent and the data collection took 15 years.[45] Al-Idrisi (1099-1180), one of the few Arabs who had ever been to France and England, as well as Spain, Central Asia and Constantinople, was used to create the The Book of Roger where from that amount of data he gathered a large amount of information about the known lands and about various places, capitals and cities. Using information inherited from classical geographers, he created one of the most accurate maps of the world to date, the Tabula Rogeriana (1154). The map, written in Arabic, shows the entire Eurasian continent and the northern part of Africa.

A supporter of environmental determinism was the medieval Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz (776-869), who explained how the environment could determine the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of a given community. He used his early theory of evolution to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed was the result of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in northern Najd as evidence for his theory.[46]

medieval Europe

During the Early Middle Ages, geographical knowledge in European societies was practically interrupted with the decline and disappearance of the Roman Empire. (Although it is a widespread misconception that they thought the world was flat), a religious cosmography dominated in which the Earth was represented as a circular disk and the continents (Africa, Europe and Asia) were arranged centrally in Jerusalem and the simple T in O Map became the standard representation of the world.

The voyages of the Venetian explorer Marco Polo through the Mongol Empire in the 20th century, the Christian Crusades of the 20th century, and the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of exploration during the 20th century opened new horizons and stimulated geographical writings.

The Mongols also had extensive knowledge of the geography of Europe and Asia, based on their governance and control of much of this area, and they used that information to conduct large military expeditions. Evidence for this is found in historical resources such as The Secret History of the Mongols and other Persian chronicles written in the 19th and 20th centuries. For example, a map of the world was created during the rule of the Great Yuan Dynasty and is currently preserved in South Korea. (See also: Maps of the Yuan Dynasty.)

During the 19th century, Henry the Navigator of Portugal supported explorations of the African coast and became a leader in promoting geographical studies. Among the most notable accounts of travel and discovery published during the century were those of Giambattista Ramusio in Venice, Richard Hakluyt in England, and Theodore de Bry in what is now Belgium.

Contenido

Este período de la historia de la geografía concierne a la era histórica de la Edad Moderna.

En 1406, Jacobo d'Angelo completó la traducción latina de la Geografía "Geografía (Ptolomeo)") de Ptolomeo a partir de una copia obtenida en Bizancio. Los escritos de Ptolomeo y sus sucesores islámicos proporcionaron un plan sistemático para organizar y representar la información geográfica. En 1410, el cardenal Pierre d'Ailly escribió el Imago Mundi, que se imprimirá en 1478. Cristóbal Colón tenía una copia.

En 1475, las tablas ptolemaicas de coordenadas estaban disponibles y permitían la construcción de mapas. La invención de la imprenta permitió su amplia distribución. Hay cinco ediciones de estas tablas hasta 1486.

El uso de la brújula transmitida por los árabes va a permitir la navegación en alta mar. Con la estimación del curso y de la distancia entre dos puertos con el uso de la corredera, será posible trazar, a partir del siglo , un nuevo tipo de cartas para ayudar a la navegación, los portulanos. Destacará la escuela cartográfica mallorquina, donde hubo varios cartógrafos judíos.

Para sortear las tierras de los musulmanes y prescindir del monopolio del comercio con Oriente de Venecia, el Portugal de Enrique el Navegante lanzará expediciones de descubrimiento. Los portugueses buscarán llegar a India y China mediante la organización de viajes de circunnavegación de África liderados por Vasco da Gama. Los españoles, gracias a Cristóbal Colón, buscarán llegar a China por la ruta occidental cruzando el océano Atlántico, cuya longitud había subestimado. Magallanes propuso dar la vuelta al mundo por Sudamérica y descubrió el océano Pacífico, Jacques Cartier realizó su primer viaje a Canadá en 1534. A mediados del siglo , François Xavier") inició el inicio de la evangelización de Japón.

En los siglos y , las grandes expediciones") marítimas aumentaron enormemente el conocimiento del planeta. Esas expediciones estuvieron acompañadas de una escrupulosa actividad de observación astronómica y geográfica. El conocimiento cartográfico aumenta, tanto por la cantidad de nuevos conocimientos aportados por las exploraciones, con la amplia difusión de documentos gracias a la imprenta, como por los nuevos métodos y sólidos fundamentos teóricos (proyección de Mercator en el siglo ).

La cartografía terrestre también progresará bajo la presión de los cambios en la sociedad. La transición desde la sociedad feudal a la sociedad moderna con el desarrollo del derecho romano y el derecho de propiedad de la tierra requerirá la medición de la tierra y el desarrollo del catastro. La afirmación de los poderes de los soberanos europeos los llevará a querer medir sus dominios. Al mismo tiempo, el desarrollo de la trigonometría y la aparición de la plancheta para medir ángulos, permitirá mejorar los levantamientos topográficos. Los mapas del mundo de la Geographica Generalis de Bernhardus Varenius y los de Gerardus Mercator dan testimonio de la nueva generación de geógrafos.

En Italia, Giovanni Botero publicó en Roma, de 1591 a 1592, los tres volúmenes de las Relazioni Universali que marcaron el nacimiento de la estadística o ciencia descriptiva del Estado. Se trataba de una geografía aplicada a las necesidades de las nuevas administraciones.

El cartógrafo otomano Piri Reis creó mapas de navegación que expuso en Kitab-ı Bahriye. El trabajo comprende un atlas de mapas de pequeñas partes del Mediterráneo, junto con información sobre el mar. En la segunda versión del trabajo, incluyó un mapa de las Américas.[47]​.

Hasta el siglo , los términos geógrafo o cartógrafo se usaban indistintamente. Pero, al mismo tiempo que aumentaban su conocimiento geográfico, los viajeros comenzarán a interesarse por la historia natural que nutrirá el conocimiento de la Tierra. Los descubrimientos científicos darán a los geógrafos nuevos instrumentos: el termómetro inventado por Galileo en 1597, el barómetro por Evangelista Torricelli en 1643. El desarrollo del espíritu científico hará desaparecer gradualmente las interpretaciones teológicas de los fenómenos naturales.

Tras los viajes de Marco Polo, el interés por la geografía se extendió por toda Europa. Alrededor de c. 1400, los escritos de Ptolomeo y sus sucesores proporcionaron un marco sistemático para unir y representar la información geográfica. Este marco fue utilizado por los académicos durante los siglos venideros, siendo los aspectos positivos el período previo a la iluminación geográfica; sin embargo, las mujeres y los escritos indígenas fueron en gran medida excluidos del discurso. Las conquistas globales europeas comenzaron a principios del siglo con las primeras expediciones portuguesas a África e India, así como la conquista de América por España en 1492 y continuaron con una serie de expediciones navales europeas a través del Atlántico y más tarde el Pacífico y expediciones rusas a Siberia hasta el siglo .

La expansión europea en ultramar llevó al surgimiento de los imperios coloniales, con el contacto entre el «Viejo» y el «Nuevo Mundo» produciendo el intercambio colombino: una amplia transferencia de plantas, animales, alimentos, poblaciones (incluyendo esclavos), enfermedades transmisibles y cultura entre los continentes. Estos esfuerzos colonialistas en los siglos y revivieron el deseo de una mayor precisión de los detalles geográficos y de unos fundamentos teóricos más sólidos.

El mapa de Waldseemüller Universalis Cosmographia, creado por el cartógrafo alemán Martin Waldseemüller en abril de 1507, fue el primer mapa de las Américas en el que se menciona el nombre «América». Antes de esto, los nativos americanos se referían a su tierra dependiendo de su ubicación, siendo uno de los términos más utilizados «Abya Yala», que significa 'tierra de sangre vital'. Estos discursos geográficos indígenas fueron en gran parte ignorados o apropiados por los colonialistas europeos para dar paso al pensamiento europeo.

El mapa eurocéntrico se diseñó a partir de una modificación de la segunda proyección de Ptolomeo, pero se amplió para incluir las Américas.[48]​ El mapa de Waldseemuller se ha denominado «certificado de nacimiento de Américass».[49]​ Waldseemüller también creó mapas impresos denominados globos terráqueos, que se podían recortar y pegar en esferas que daban como resultado un globo. Esto ha sido ampliamente debatido por despreciar la extensa historia de los nativos americanos que precedió a la invasión del siglo , en el sentido de que la implicación de un "certificado de nacimiento" implica una historia previa en blanco.

16th - 18th centuries in the West

Geography as a science experiences enthusiasm and exerts influence during the Scientific Revolution and Religious Reformation. In the Victorian period, overseas exploration gave institutional identity and geography was "the science of imperialism par excellence."[50] Imperialism is a crucial concept for Europeans, as the institution became involved in geographical exploration and the colonial project. Authority was questioned and utility gained importance. In the age of Enlightenment, geography generated knowledge and made it intellectually and practically possible as a university discipline. Natural theology required geography to investigate the world as a great machine of the Divine. Scientific voyages and voyages built geopolitical power from geographical knowledge, partly sponsored by the Royal Society. John Pinkerton") evaluated that the century had "the gigantic progress of all the sciences, and in particular of geographical information" and "there has been an alteration in states and borders."

The discourse of geographical history gave rise to many new theories and thoughts, but the hegemony of European male scholarship led to the exclusion of non-Western theories, observations, and knowledge. An example is the interaction between humans and nature, with Marxist thought criticizing nature as another commodity within capitalism, European thought seeing nature as an idealized or objective concept that differs from human society, and Native American discourse, which sees nature and humans as within one category. The implicit hierarchy of knowledge that was perpetuated across these institutions has only recently been challenged, with the Royal Geographical Society allowing women to join as members in the 20th century.

After the English Civil War, Samuel Hartlib and his Baconian community promoted scientific application, which showed the popularity of the utility. For William Petty, administrators needed to be “skilled in the best rules of judicial astrology” to “calculate the events of disease and forecast the weather.” Institutionally, Gresham College" spread scientific advancement to a wider audience as merchants, and that institute later became the Royal Society. William Cuningham") illustrated the utilitarian function of cosmography through the military implement of maps. John Dee used mathematics to study location, his main interest in geography, and encouraged the exploitation of resources with finds collected during travels. The Religious Reformation stimulated geographical exploration and research. Philipp Melanchthon changed the production of geographical knowledge from “pages of scriptures” to “experience in the world.” Bartholomäus Keckerman") separated geography from theology because the "general workings of providence" required empirical investigation. His follower, Bernhardus Varenius, made geography a science in the century and published Geographia Generalis, a text that was used in Newton's teaching of geography at Cambridge.

18th century

In the 19th century, James Cook and La Pérouse explored the Pacific area.

Through his writings, Jean-Jacques Rousseau will promote the rehabilitation of field experience as a source of education and geographical knowledge. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi created schools applying Rousseau's ideas especially for the teaching of geography. The two geographers Carl Ritter and Élisée Reclus were trained in the Pestalozzian schools.

In the 19th century, geography began to emerge as a scientific discipline. But it was not until the century that it took a real place in teaching in France. In the 19th century, geography was recognized as a discipline in its own right and was part of a typical university curriculum in Europe (especially in Paris and Berlin), but not in the United Kingdom, where geography is generally taught as a subdiscipline of other fields.

Background of modern geography

The first half of the century will be fundamental for the development of modern geography and for its university institutionalization. Several authors have pointed out various conditions of possibility in its development:

• - Exploration trips that provided a wealth of new data and experiences.

• - European colonial expansion, closely linked to geographical societies that popularized geographical knowledge and created a social state of favorable opinion towards geography.

• - The development of nationalism, which will give the discipline a social and political function linked to the consolidation of national sentiment.

• - The elaboration of conceptual projects for geography developed by Humboldt and Ritter.

• - The recognition of geography as a school discipline that will lead to the creation of geography chairs to train teachers.

For some authors (such as H. Capel) this last condition is the main factor in the development of geography at the end of the century.

Alexander de Humboldt (1769-1859) will later be claimed as one of the founders of modern geography, although it is doubtful that he considered himself a geographer. Humboldt intended to found what he himself calls the "physical description of the Earth", that is, what is understood today as an integrated physical geography. A discipline capable of integrating the different elements of the natural world. This project will be reflected in his great work Cosmos.

Carl Ritter (1779-1859) for his part will outline a very different project. Ritter held a position as professor of geography at the University of Berlin from 1820 until his death. His main work, General Comparative Geography, consisted of 21 volumes with a huge amount of information. For Ritter, the objective of scientific geography is "the organization of space on the earth's surface and its role in the historical development (of man)", a project that was situated within the framework of the German intellectual tradition of the philosophy of history developed by Herder and Hegel.

The work of both authors, although having great importance and exerting a strong subsequent influence on many geographers, did not have continuity over time. Authors such as Paul Claval") have pointed out the strong decline that geographical research experienced between the death of these two great intellectuals in 1859 and the 1870s when multiple chairs of geography began to be created in Germany.

Institutionalization of geography

Germany is where geography will experience a strong boost, mainly associated with primary and secondary education. In 1870 there were only three geography chairs in this country. However, by 1890, practically all German universities had specialized teaching in geography thanks to the decision of the Prussian Ministry of Education. In this regard, Germany will set up a true model for Europe, especially for France. The chairs will be occupied by scholars with diverse backgrounds. For example, Ferdinand von Richthofen was a prestigious geologist, as was Oscar Peschel. Friedrich Ratzel was a pharmacist by training and a zoologist by his later work. Adolf Kirchoff was a historian and philologist.

In France the institutionalization of geography will follow in the footsteps of Germany. However, geography in France will be developed mainly by historians such as Paul Vidal de La Blache, Bertrand Auerbach") or Émile Berlioux").

In Great Britain, university institutionalization will be later with strong opposition from geologists and historians. In this process, the Royal Geographical Society played a fundamental role, offering the universities of Oxford and Cambridge financial aid for the creation of teaching positions. Halford Mackinder, a historian by training, will occupy the position at the University of Oxford, achieving great popularity. Francis Henry Hill Guillemard, doctor and zoologist, will do it for Cambridge.

Scientific geography project: physical geography and anthropogeography

Modern geography does not therefore emerge as a formed and defined discipline. The various proposals that appear to delimit the field of geography are not coincident or shared, a fact that continues to the present day. At first, the scientific geography that is developed in German universities begins to be defined above all as physical geography and more specifically as physiography or geomorphology. The work of the German geologists and geographers, Richthofen, Peschel and Penck will be fundamental in this line. In fact, F. von Richthofen will be the first to define geography as the science of the Earth's surface, thereby eliminating from modern geography the pre-institutional topics of astronomical geography, mathematical geography and cartography. Likewise, geography stopped being the science that studies the entire planet, to focus on its surface.

However, it will be the project of F. Ratzel (1844-1904) that will achieve greater significance and diffusion. Ratzel, within the framework of positivism at the end of the century and greatly influenced by the work of Darwin, Haeckel and Ritter, proposed a discipline focused on the influences of the physical environment on man, which he called Anthropogeography (1882). It will be a bridge discipline between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a naturalistic explanation of social facts focused on studying the nature of societies and their differences and on describing the diffusion of cultural traits and the migratory movements of human groups. In short, Ratzel's Anthropogeography attempted to find the natural causes of human events.

The success of this proposal for geography will be quite great, at least initially. He influenced both French geography through J. Brunhes and Vidal de la Blache and English geography through H. Mackinder and above all in the nascent American geography, until then fundamentally physical and developed by scientists with naturalistic training such as William Morris Davis or R.Salisbury"), through a direct disciple of Ratzel, Ellen Churchill Semple.

In France, Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), a disciple of Ritter, produced a deeply personal and popular work, but which paradoxically did not obtain recognition from official French institutions nor would it have continuity until its rediscovery by radical geographers in the 1970s. From an anarchist ethic, Reclus would focus on the relationships between human groups and the natural environment, on "recognizing the intimate bond that brings together the succession of "human events and the action of telluric forces."

Classical geography: regions and landscapes

In the last decades of the century, a reaction against positivism and naturalism begins to emerge. In geography this coincides with a strong criticism of the, until then, successful environmental ideas coming from authors such as F. Ratzel. The conceptual separation between nature and spirit and, correlatively, between natural sciences and social sciences is accentuated. This affected the core of the geographical formulation as a bridge science focused on man-environment relationships.

As an alternative, a new geography begins to take shape that will have region and landscape as its central concepts. The concrete (idiographic") character of geography is affirmed in the face of the generalizing (nomothetic") pretensions of environmentalism and historicist explanations and inductivism as a method of knowledge gain greater strength. The protagonists of this true conceptual transformation will be Alfred Hettner in Germany, Paul Vidal de la Blache and Lucien Febvre in France and, later, Carl Sauer and Richard Hartshorne in the United States, where the environmentalist tradition had greater roots.

However, regional geography and landscape geography were configured independently and, in part, in opposition. It can be said that while environmental geography configured a science-relationship focused on the interaction between human groups and the physical environment; Regional geography configured a science-method (geography as a point of view). Landscape geography would instead be developed in a more orthodox way, as an object-science (the landscape as a material product or reflection of a human group).

Alfred Hettner (1859-1941) is the one who shapes regional geography in a more systematic way. For Hettner, the study of the history of geography showed the existence of two concepts of this science. That of Erdkunde, that is, geography as general geography, and that of Landerkunde or regional or chorological approach. If it had previously been possible to accept geography as a general science of the Earth, the birth of disciplines such as geology, geophysics or geodesy made this formulation impossible, making the regional approach the only possible one. Likewise, Hettner criticized Richthofen's definition of geography as a science of the earth's surface, since "studies of the earth's surface as such, that is, without taking into account local differences, are not yet geographical." He also ruled out other possible visions of geography such as the proposal of a landscape science since "the homogeneity of geography [...] cannot, therefore, be based on the unity of landscape, but can only be established from the internal nature of regions, landscapes and localities." Nor was he in favor of understanding geography as a science of spatial distributions given that "the where of things is - like their when, local distribution and diffusion [...] - a characteristic, a quality of things or phenomena [...] and must necessarily be covered by the systematic sciences." Thus, for Hettner: "only when we conceive phenomena as properties of terrestrial spaces, will we be doing geography" and geography was, therefore, neither a natural science nor a social science, but both at the same time since "nature and man form an inseparable part of the characterization of regions." In the United States, R. Hartshorne (1899-1992) introduced, although late, Hettnerian ideas in his influential work (1939).

Institutionalization of geography in Spain

In Spain, the institutionalization of geography was considerably late compared to the most advanced European countries. This institutionalization did not really begin until after the civil war (1936-1939), although it is true that previously there were important geography scholars such as Pablo Vila or Gonzalo de Reparaz who saw their work interrupted by exile or for other reasons. The institutionalization of geography in the university was basically based on the fulfillment of two functions: the training of teachers for teaching and the role of ideological support of the regime.

The professors who will have a more prominent role in this process will be José Manuel Casas Torres, professor of geography at the University of Zaragoza from 1944 to 1966 and later professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, and Manuel de Terán Álvarez (1904-1984), professor of geography at the University of Madrid since 1951. We must also highlight the important work of the Elcano Institute of the CSIC (Superior Council of Scientific Research) created in 1940 and where what would be the most important geographical magazine in Spain, Estudios Geográficos, was published (and continues to be published).

Spanish geography will be strongly influenced by the ideas of French geography and to a lesser extent by those of German geography. This influence will be noticeable both in the conceptions of Spanish geography about the discipline itself and in the working methods. For Manuel de Terán: "the region, the geographical means, the complex or combination of surface facts, according to Allix's expression, the landscape, this is what assures geography of its autonomy and the criterion of certainty for any demarcation of fields and competencies with other Earth sciences." Spanish geographers will mostly accept, therefore, the ideas that geography is above all a regional-landscape science. Regional monographs will also be the method par excellence of the first Spanish geography.

Theoretical-quantitative geography

Beginning in the 1950s, geography experienced a profound crisis in the United Kingdom and the United States that led to the creation of the so-called theoretical-quantitative geography or simply "new geography." The emergence of this new geography coincides with similar trends of crisis and change in other disciplines, especially within the field of social sciences. The common basis of all these changes is the return to a philosophical neopositivism, that is, a single valid scientific method is claimed for all sciences regardless of their object of study, qualitative procedures are rejected over quantitative ones, emphasis is placed on the construction of models and the search for laws and a certain naturalistic and more specifically physicalist reductionism is advocated.

Within geography, a significant milestone will be the publication in 1953 of F. K. Schaefer's article "*Exceptionalism in Geography." Schaefer harshly attacked the regional conception, especially as expounded by R. Hartshorne. Faced with this conception, which he called exceptionalist because it focused on the only thing (the region, the landscape), Schaefer advocated for a standardized geography, in terms of methods, with the rest of the sciences, which had as its fundamental objective "the formulation of laws governing the spatial distribution of certain features on the earth's surface."

Other important milestones in the quantitative revolution will be the publication in 1962 of the work Theoretical Geography by William Bunge. By this date the new geography had developed quite a bit in the United States from the universities of Wisconsin (Madison "Madison (Wisconsin)") and Washington (Seattle), where important quantitative geographers such as Brian J.L. were trained. Berry") and Richard L. Morrill"). From the United States the movement soon spread to Great Britain and Sweden. In other countries such as France or Spain, where the regionalist and landscape conception had a strong influence, the reception of this new vision of geography and its methods was much later, since it lasted until the late 60s and early 70s and its influence was considerably lower. Quantitative geography will recover authors and works more or less forgotten or not previously taken into account by geography, such as Walter Christaller's Theory of Central Places (The Central Places in Southern Germany, 1933) or J. von Thünen (1783-1850) on the distribution of agricultural land uses.

But quantitative geography not only incorporated new methods and a new object of study (the explanation of the distribution of phenomena on the earth's surface) but also influenced the reformulation of the ecological tradition and the regional tradition that continued, therefore, being present in geographical work from these new positions and from traditional conceptions. Edward Ackerman in 1963 stated that the fundamental problem of geography was "nothing less than the understanding of the enormous system of interaction that comprises all humanity and its natural environment on the earth's surface", thus reaffirming, in a renewed way, a traditional field of study. Likewise, within physical geography, the usefulness of new concepts such as ecosystem, geosystem or landscape ecology is explored. The study of the region is also reconsidered. The concept of polarized or functional region appears, in close relation to the development of an economic subdiscipline, regional science. The region stops being considered a homogeneous landscape and begins to be characterized as a system of functional relationships, where its different elements and especially the regional metropolis, appear cohesive by flows of all kinds (of people, goods, capital, information...). In the field of urban geography, the influence of the Chicago school of human ecology led by Robert E. Park" will be noted, especially for its attention to intra-urban spatial organization (Ernest Burgess's concentric rings model).

Behavioral geography, radical geography and humanistic geography

During the 1960s, at the same time that the neopositivist vision of geography was imposed, the first criticisms of this vision of geography began to emerge and alternative proposals began to be outlined. The common axis of all criticism will be the acceptance, often not very reflective, of the neopositivist philosophy. Its excessive formalism, its physicalist reductionism and its obsession with searching for laws and constructing generalizing theories will be criticized. Criticism will begin to converge around three alternative currents: behavioral geography, radical geography, and humanistic geography.

From within the paradigm of quantitative geography itself, the psychological dimension of human agents is discovered and the insufficiency of the theoretical models developed to explain the location of activities and land uses is revealed. The problem of deviations between expected behaviors arises, according to existing economistic models (rational economic man) and real behaviors that necessarily respond to other variables. This whole theoretical movement led to a concern for human perception, mental maps, public images, etc.

Largely influenced by the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, geographers became deeply dissatisfied with the state of geography and its lack of concern for issues of social relevance. An important theorist such as David Harvey, author of the "new geography" manual Explanation in Geography (1969), will say in 1972 that "the quantitative revolution has run its course and apparently the results are less and less interesting" and that "our paradigm is not up to par. "It is ripe for an overthrow." Thus arises what will be called radical geography. This alternative geography aims to be committed and contribute to the revolutionary changes that society needs. It criticizes the alleged neutrality and scientism of quantitative geography and seeks new topics of study such as poverty and the poor, ghettos, urban living conditions (public services, housing crisis...), social well-being (through the geography of well-being), imperialism and neocolonialism, etc. A journal like Antipode: A radical Journal of Geography edited by Richard Peet will be fundamental in this entire renewal movement.

From a more theoretical level, radical geography will begin to introduce Marxism into geography. A Marxist geography very close to the social sciences is progressively configured. With great influences from French Marxist structuralism (Lefebvre, Althusser, Castells) space and the spatial configurations of social life will be defined as a social product, that is, as a social fact that must be understood within the framework of the corresponding social structures and therefore in the context of a geography understood as a social science. In France, the radical movement will also have its repercussions and will culminate in the creation, on the personal initiative of Yves Lacoste, of the geopolitical magazine (1976).

New regional geography and other emerging lines of research

Since the mid-1980s, there have been various proposals to renew regional geography, the former epicenter of geography. Already since the end of the seventies, D. Gregory") described as a vital task the revitalization of regional studies and the reformulation of the concept of region. In Gregory's own words: "We need to know something about the constitution of regional social formations, regional articulations and regional transformations." But these proposals for the recovery of regional geography are diverse. From those that simply propose a return to the classical geographical synthesis, to those that seek a new regional geography based on the framework of social sciences and social theory. In the latter perspective, the social construction nature of the regions is highlighted. The regions will no longer be permanent entities that the geographer is responsible for identifying and describing, but rather authentic socio-spatial formations that are constructed, change and can disappear. The influence of A.Giddens' theory of structuration on these new formulations will be quite marked.

Also during the 1980s and 1990s, new fields of geographical research emerged. Particularly noteworthy are the emergence of "gender" or feminist geography, "postcolonial studies", the new cultural geography and the revitalization of an ancient but long-marginalized geographical discipline, political geography.

Geography at the beginning of the 21st century

In this century, geography is presented as a broad and varied field with potential and also problems. After more than one hundred years of institutional development, geographers have not been able to agree on a common theoretical framework or general research objectives that integrate the development of the different geographical subdisciplines. Therefore, many theorists recognize that more than there being geography, there is in fact a set of geographical sciences, each with its own objects and methods. Dualisms and the traditional separation between general geography and regional geography as well as between physical geography and human geography persist. The various conceptions of geography coexist in research in an attitude of certain eclecticism. But, on the other hand, geography has undergone important changes in its modern history. There has been a great development of systematic geographies, totally new research topics have been delved into such as imperialism, socio-territorial inequality, the urbanization of rural spaces, environmental risks and impacts, etc. and new techniques and methods of great value have been incorporated (remote sensing, GIS, statistics, GPS.

Prominent geographers of the century and the beginning of the century include David Harvey, Milton Santos, Yves Lacoste, Paul Vidal de la Blache, Ellsworth Huntington, Walter Christaller, Halford John Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, Carl Sauer, Yi-Fu Tuan, Horacio Capel, Eduardo Martínez de Pisón, Mike Goodchild, Brian Berry, Peter Haggett, Anne Buttimer, Edward Soja, Ellen Churchill Semple, Paul Claval, Neil Smith and Doreen Massey.

Premodern Geography.

Ancient Geography: Greece, Rome and Egypt.

• - Anaximander of Miletus, made one of the first maps of the known world.

• - Hecataeus of Miletus, improved the previous map and described the coasts of the Mediterranean.

• - Herodotus of Halicarnassus, made several trips, where he made a description.

• - Eratosthenes coined the term "geography" and made the first measurements of the earth.

• - Strabo, focused on human aspects, history and myths.

• - Ptolemy, made a description of the world of his time, used a system of latitude and longitude, which served as an example for cartographers.

Geography of the Middle Ages.

• - Ibn Battuta.

• - Ibn Khaldun.

• - Al-Idrisi, gathered a large amount of information about the known lands and about various places, capitals and cities. He wrote The Book of Rogerio.

Geography from the 15th to 18th centuries.

• - Mercator, found new solutions to the problem of projecting the Earth's surface onto a flat surface. He was a builder and trader of globes.

• - Varenius, studied the causal connection of geographical facts in his General Geography.

Americo Vespucci.

The background of modern geography.

• - Humboldt made great contributions to physical geography that he captured in his work Cosmos.

• - Carl Ritter explained the relationships between the physical and human environment in his Comparative General Geography.

Modern Geography.

The institutionalization of geography.

Germany.

• - F. von Richothofen for whom Geology, Climate and Paleoclimate are determinants in Nature. He left his work Journey to China.

• - Friedrich Ratzel. Relates vital space and population in Anthropogeography.

France.

• - Paul Vidal de la Blache. He founded the magazine Annales de Geographie.

• - Bertrand Auerbach").

• - Émile Berlioux").

Great Britain.

• - Royal Geographical Society.

• - Halford John Mackinder. He introduced Geography into the British educational system.

The project of a scientific geography: physical geography and anthropogeography.

• - F. von Richothofen, defined geography as the science of the Earth's surface, thereby eliminating the topics of astronomical geography, mathematical geography and cartography. Likewise, geography stopped studying the entire planet, to focus on its surface.

• - Friedrich Ratzel, will propose a discipline focused on the influences of the physical environment on man, which he will call anthropogeography.

• - Élisée Reclus, will focus on the relationships between human groups and the natural environment, on “recognizing the intimate bond that brings together the succession of human events and the action of telluric forces.” He embraced anarchism and wrote "Geographie Universelle."

Classical geography: regions and landscapes.

• - Alfred Hettner, geography must address the differences located on the earth's surface, discovering spatial units, defining them and comparing them with each other, as expressed in the "Fundamentals of Regional Geography."

• - Paul Vidal de La Blache, the object of geography was the relationship between man and nature, from the perspective of the landscape, of the study of the region. Man is considered an active being, who suffers the influence of the environment, acting on it and transforming it, nature is considered as a set of possibilities for man's action.

• - Lucien Febvre, will be the introducer of the possibilist doctrine, that is, he will be in charge of highlighting the relative freedom of human groups against the physical environment. He wrote "Philip II and the Franco-County".

• - Jean Brunhes, who first incorporated the study of landscape into his work and the author of the first systematic manual of human geography. He was an expert in irrigation.

• - Carl O. Sauer, representative of the Californian school, saw geography as a science that studied the morphology of the landscape and especially the transformation of natural landscapes into cultural landscapes by the action of diverse cultures.

Theoretical-quantitative geography.

• - F. K. Schaefer"), advocated a geography whose fundamental objective was “the formulation of laws that govern the spatial distribution of certain characteristics on the earth's surface." In the work "Exceptionalism in Geography" (1953) he advocates methodological innovation based on the use of data.

• - William Bunge published "Theoretical Geography" (1962), the first book that systematized methodologies of quantitative spatial analysis and after a quantitative stage he discovered the social usefulness of Geography.

• - Brian Berry proposes the geographic data matrix (1964) which enables the application of multivariate analysis methods with the purpose of regionalization.

• - Walter Christaller, his main contribution to the discipline was the Theory of central places. He is a precursor of Territorial Planning.

• - J.von Thünen. He modeled the location of the crops.

• - Edward Augustus Ackerman.

The specific Epistemology of geography arises in a critical sense to explain the scientific and conceptual nature of geography; This describes how from human thought and the conscious appearance of the being, the real is perceived through the sensitive organs, giving rise to the recognition of the earth by man, which in this way allows a passage from nomadic to sedentary man when finding a need to find food, protection and clothing. Positions such as those of Francisco José de Caldas highlight that the constant change and advances in this science are appropriate to man's need to establish himself and recognize his territories.[51]​.

• - CAPEL, H.: Philosophy and Science in Contemporary Geography. Barcelona: Serbal, 2012 (1984). ISBN 978-84-7628-689-0.

• - GÓMEZ MENDOZA, J., MUÑOZ JIMÉNEZ, J. and ORTEGA CANTERO, N.: Geographical thinking. Interpretive study and anthology of texts (From Humboldt to radical tendencies). Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988.

• - GONZÁLEZ FLORES, E.: The universe of geography. Madrid: Akal, 1991.

• - ORTEGA VALCÁRCEL, J.: The horizons of geography. Barcelona: Ariel Geografía, 2000.

• - UNWIN, T.: The place of Geography. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995.

• - Juan Vilá Valentí. The concepts of Geography and General Geography. In Vicente Bielza de Ory, Ed. General Geography I pp 13 - 23. Madrid: Santillana S. A., third edition 1993.

• - The History of Geography History with Maps.