Geographic Thought

September 15, 2015
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The Greeks had been the first ones to make systematic registers of geography, therefore its intense commercial activity allowed them to explore and to know different peoples and places throughout the coast of the Mediterranean sea. The proper word geography comes of the Greek (' ' geo' ' = land; ' ' grafia' ' = writing, description). It is observed that even so the initial knowledge of the thinkers and Greek writers little are resembled what is Geography today. Its relative works to the forms and dimension of the Land, to the mountain systems, the types of climate and the relations between the man and the way, had constituted important sources for the geographic knowledge that if develops well later (KOSEL and FILIZOLA, 1996). What it is Geography and which its object of study? The opinions had evolved and varied very throughout the times. Initially, the geographic knowledge eminently practical, empirical age, was limited to catalogue it and to map names and places, serving to the armies that advanced in neighboring regions they made so that it with more security in direction to the strategically established points. Geography appeared to assist the State in the land appropriation and the wars, however with little scientific severity. However, the scientific, geographic concerns, had appeared from century XIX, when Alexander de Humboldt, making great trips, observed the existing relations between the vegetal associations and the conditions of climate and ground, he also observed the relations between the systems of exploration of the land and the man and still the social structures between dominated and dominadores. In this same time, the historian Karl Ritter, who was professor of the University of Berlin, looked for to study some systems of organization of the terrestrial space, comparing peoples, institutions and systems of use of the resources. These two Germans of distinct formations, that had given to origin Geography.

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