ETYM French géographie, l. geographia, from Greek; gea the earth + graphos description, from graphein to write, describe. Related to Graphic.
Study of the earth's surface; includes people's responses to topography and climate and soil and vegetation; SYN. geographics.
The study of the Earth’s surface; its topography, climate, and physical conditions, and how these factors affect people and society. It is usually divided into physical geography, dealing with landforms and climates, and human geography, dealing with the distribution and activities of peoples on Earth.
History.
Early pre-classical geographers concentrated on map-making, surveying, and exploring. In classical Greece theoretical ideas first became a characteristic of geography. Aristotle and Pythagoras believed the Earth to be a sphere, Eratosthenes was the first to calculate the circumference of the world, and Herodotus investigated the origin of the Nile floods and the relationship between climate and human behavior.
During the medieval period the study of geography progressed little in Europe, but the Muslim world retained much of the Greek tradition, embellishing the 2nd-century maps of Ptolemy. During the early Renaissance the role of the geographer as an explorer and surveyor became important once again.
The foundation of modern geography as an academic subject stems from the writings of Humboldt and Ritter, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, who for the first time defined geography as a major branch of scientific inquiry.