Geography.name Website Review

GEOGRAPHY’S primary focus is “where?” This question has been an essential part of human history from its outset. Knowing where there was water, food, safety, where were the cities and best trade products and special raw materials, especially flint and later metal for tools, was crucial to human and cultural evolution. The need as well as the desire (curiosity) to explore new places and experiences would seem an ingrained human characteristic. Certainly, the ability to predict seasonal cycles for migration and foods—simple survival—elevated those who knew the answers to special, probably shamanistic or priestly, positions. There is little in this world that is not geographic in some way. Anything that has a place, any place that has an impact on human history, or any human activity is geographic. Once the geographer knows where things are, the an*lytical focus becomes one of how humans and place are related or interact. For example, how do desert people adapt? How do they conserve and use water? How and when do they move? Geography is one of those subjects essential to understanding virtually everything; yet as we witness in the daily news of events around the world, it is studied and understood by few policy makers and politicians or even journalists. Geography is a subject that encompas*es all the topics necessary for the Renaissance person: familiarity with the natural environment, society, and knowledge of cultures, distant and near places, economics, politics, physics, the atmosphere, the literature of places and cultures as it reflects its environment, as well as the mapping and measuring of spatial distributions and relationships. There was a time when geographers necessarily focused on collecting and inventorying facts and data about places because much of the world was unknown. This basic need has not generally pas*ed. Even in the 21st century an inventory of the location and nature of places, peoples, economies, species, and so on. remains essential, especially given the high rate of change. Fortunately we have satellite images