Читать книгу Geography For Dummies - Jerry T. Mitchell - Страница 14

A Greek named Eratosthenes (died about 192 B.C.) is sometimes called the “Father of Geography” since he coined the word “geography.” The Greeks themselves called Homer the “Father of Geography” because his epic poem, Odyssey, written about a thousand years before Eratosthenes was born, is the oldest account of the fringe of the Greek world. In addition to these gentlemen, at least two other men have been named “Father of Geography,” all of which suggests a very interesting paternity suit. But I digress. That the story goes back to the days of the Greeks tells us that geography is a very old subject. This is not to say that others, say Arabs or the Chinese, were not also thinking about how to describe Earth. People of every age and culture have sought to know and understand their immediate surroundings and the world beyond. They stood at the edges of seas and imagined distant shores. They wondered what lies on the other side of a mountain or beyond the horizon. Ultimately, of course, they acted upon those speculations. They explored. They left old lands and occupied new lands. And as a result, millennia later, explorers such as Columbus, Magellan, and others found humans almost everywhere they went.