Human Geography Through Corridors of Time

Although the prestige of human geography as a subject grew in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the effects of nature on human activities and settlements were understood several centuries before Christ. The process of adaptation and adjustment to the environment and its transformation started with the rise of human beings in various ecological niches on the earth’s surface. In this way, if we imagine the beginning of human geography with the interaction of environment and humans, then its roots are very deep in history. Therefore, there is a long-term continuum (continuity) in the disciplines of human geography. Though with time there has been a change in the approaches to explain it. This dynamism in approaches and impulses reflects the changing nature of the subject.

Earlier the interaction between different societies was negligible and knowledge about each other was limited. Travellers and explorers used to disseminate information about their travel areas. Navigational skills were not developed and sea voyages were fraught (full) with dangers. Towards the end of the 15th century there were attempts at exploration in Europe, and gradually the myths and mysteries about these countries and peoples began to open. The colonial era provided the impetus for further exploration to gain access to the resources of the territories and to obtain tabular information. The intention here is not to present in-depth historical details, only to make you aware of the processes of evolution of human geography.

As you have seen, human geography tries to explain the relationship between all the elements of human life and the places where they are found. Thus human geography has a highly interdisciplinary nature. To understand and explain the human elements found on the earth plane for this, human geography develops a close interface with allied disciplines of the social sciences. With the expansion of knowledge new sub-fields arise and the same happens with human geography.