Geography Step 1

Vocabulary is best learned in-context or within a text. For history and geography this is no different. Placing words where they belong in their historical or geographic contexts assists the reader in understanding the terms associated with historical context.

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Directions: Read the historical context below and create a listing of vocabulary associated with geography. You will need to write the word along with its definition.

• Complete the Geography Vocabulary Worksheet
• Complete the Geography Quiz

Geography Vocabulary In-Context

The first category of history we study is geography which is the relationship between people and the earth. Physical geography is the study of the relationship between people and the physical features of the earth such as mountains, river valleys, deserts, oceans, peninsula (land surrounded by three sides of water), and archipelago (chain of islands). Some of the most famous peninsulas are Indian Peninsula (India), Italian Peninsula (Italy), Iberian Peninsula (Spain & Portugal), Arabian Peninsula (Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, The United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia), and the Korean Peninsula (North Korea & South Korea). The Japanese archipelago consists of thousands of islands, but the four main islands of Japan are: Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku. Another geographic feature is a plateau which is an area of elevated flat land. There are a couple of famous plateaus in Asia, mainly the Deccan Plateau in India, and the Tibetan Plateau (China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and India). Another way that geography affects people are mountains. The Himalayan Mountains help protect India and China from invasion and prevent some cultural diffusion. Mountains can cause periods of isolationism. This is the belief that a country has policy of abstaining from political, social, or economic relations with other countries. In Ancient Greece, the mountains prevented Greece from unifying, since areas were controlled by city-states who ruled from their high mountains. Acropolis the Greek word for city-state means "high city". The most famous of these is found in Athens where Pericles built the Acropolis temple, "The Parthenon" to Athena. Some geographic features such as deserts can expand and cause problems for countries. This is known as desertification or the making or expansion of a desert. The Sahara desert in Africa is the largest desert in the world and is still expanding causing people to move or create new technology to manage this negative effect. Climate also affects people. In India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, monsoons or seasonal winds that bring rain determine when they can farm and when their rainy or dry seasons arrive. In Russia, the cold northern temperatures create a permafrost which is frozen ground as hard as cement which makes it difficult to build upon and create housing. Geographic features such as rivers, mountains, deserts, oceans, etc are physical features that are best displayed on a topographic map also known as a physical map. The political or governmental boundaries and the names of countries are displayed on a political map.

When humans first left Africa, they migrated (moving from one place to another) followed the coasts, where resources were abundant. The first wave moved across the Middle East, into southern Asia, and eventually all the way down to Australia. This occurred roughly between 90,000 and 30,000 years ago. Additional waves of migration followed. Between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago, humans moved north into Europe. However, their range was limited by an ice sheet that extended into the northern part of continental Europe. All of the continents(seven large masses that make up most of the earth's land surface) were eventually inhabited by humans by approximately 10,000 years ago except for Antarctica which was not explored until the 19th and 20th centuries and only has temporary inhabitants for scientific research.

Geography affects the way people live, and it can determine how successful or unsuccessful a civilization or nation becomes in the world. This is called geographic determinism. Some examples are that river valleys created the world’s first civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and India). The alluvial soil or soils that are deposited by flooding of the rivers usually in the delta area. A delta is usually a triangular mass of sediment, especially silt and sand, deposited at the mouth of a river. One of the most famous is the Nile river delta. This delta contains so much rich soil for farming insomuch that Ancient Egypt was known as the “bread basket” of Ancient Rome as it provided enough grain for the empire. Another good example of geographic determinism is the island of Great Britain. This island allowed the British Empire to become the strongest in the world due to the many deep ports which allowed them to have the ability to build ships for trade and create a strong navy. The island of Great Britain had many coal deposits directly on the surface which allowed them to start the Industrial Revolution by burning the coal to make steam which then produced energy for machines in factories. Geographic determinism also plays a part in the need to increase agriculture and the food supply by utilizing new technologies for the world’s growing population. In the 1960-70s, the Green Revolution occurred in which technology assisted in producing more food for the world.

All of these geographic elements affect the people of the world every day and can have either positive or negative effects. Broader terms such as geographic determinism assist in analyzing these geographic terms with respect to history.

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