Indians’ Contribution in Geography

⇒ In the Rig Veda (the oldest text in the world) there is a description of stars. Although the Indian astrology started around 600 B.C. (The age of Buddha). Rig Veda also describes the five seasons in India.

⇒ The famous Indian geographer, Aryabhatta (born in 476 A.D.) told that the Earth is a spherical body and calculated its circumference as 24,835 miles, which is very close to the present calculation of 24,901 miles. Aryabhattiyam is his famous book. The Hindi term for geography, ‘Bhugol’ was used for the first time in his book Surya Siddhanta.

⇒ Varah Mihir (505-587 A.D.) was the most famous geographer of India after Aryabhatta. He gave information about the Solar and Lunar eclipses. He has discussed about five concepts of Vaashist, Paitamah, Polas, Saur and Romac in his astrological treatise, Panchasiddhantika.

⇒ Brahmagupta (598-665 A.D.) wrote Brahma Siddhanta and Khand Kavya. These two treatises were translated into Arabic during the reign of Caliph Harun-al-Rashid in Baghdad.

⇒ Bhaskaracharya (1114-1185 A.D.) wrote Siddhanta Shiromani and Karanakutuhal (Calculation of Astromocical Wonders). According to him, the Earth is spherical and attracts everything by its force of gravitation. Leelavati’ and ‘Bijaganit’ are his famous books on mathematics.

⇒ India has been described as Jambu Dweep in Puranas. The eastern coast of India had been called Mahendra Malai in the ancient India.

⇒ The early Indian geographers held that the Prime Meridian passes through Ujjain.

⇒ To understand cosmology British scientist Higgs propagated the concept of God Particle in 1964 which was based on the ‘Boson thery’ of Satyendra Nath Bose of India.

⇒ An educational institute, Baitul Hikma, was established under the patronage of Caliph Harun-al-Rashid of Baghdad.

⇒ Arab geographer Al-Khwarizmi (813-883 A.D.) wrote a book named Sind Hind

Caliph Al-Mamun (1813 A.D.) got Ptolemy’s treatise translated into Arabic with the title Almagest

⇒ Kitab-al-Ashkal was the first climatic atlas prepared by Al-Balakhi.

⇒ Al-Baruni wrote his famous book ‘Kitab-al-Hind’ (Geography of India) in 1030 A.D. In the Arab world, the 11th Century is termed as the Period of Al-Baruni. The famous book of Al-Baruni, Al-Qanun-al-Masudi was written in the same style as Ptolemy’s Almagest.

⇒ Arabs were the first to present seasonal account of monsoon.

⇒ Marco Polo was a great trade-traveller of the 13th century, who trravelled for the first time from Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean.

⇒ In 1498, a famous Protuguese traveller-sailor Vasco-daGama reached the Calicut port in India via Cape of Good Hope in the African continent, in this way discovered a new sea-route to India.

⇒ Christopher Columbus a resident of Geneva, discovered America, which was at that time given the name of New World. The New World, was named America after the name of Portuguese traveller Amerigo Vespucci.

⇒ The Portuguese traveller, Magellan went around the whole world in 1520 A.D.

⇒ The traveller-sailor of Holland, Tasman discovered Tasmania and travelled New Zealand.

⇒ The English sailor Capt. James Cook travelled round the Antarctica between 1772 and 1775, while Roald Amundsen discovered the South Pole in 1911. He also discovered the Hawaiian Islands.

⇒ The famous discoveries/inventions of the Renaissance period are:

* Printing Press or Printing – about 1470 A.D.

* The Solar System – Copernicus (1543 A.D.)

* Telescope – Galileo (1609 A.D.)

* Works on Astronomy – Keppler

* Spheroid Shape of the Earth – Newton

⇒ Verenius laid the foundation of the dichotomy of Systematic Geography and Regional Geography for the first time.

⇒ The German geographer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769-1859) wrote his famous book Cosmos. He had played a great role in the development of Cosmology. Humboldt was the first person who gave an idea to construct a canal across the Panama isthmus. Humboldt coined the terms Climatology and Permafrost in Geography. He was the first to depict the isotherms on the map. Due to such a great contribution, Humboldt is called the Father of Climatology, the Father of Modern Geography and the Father of Vegetation Geography.

⇒ As an independent subject for study, Geography got recognition in 19th century A.D.

⇒ In early 20th century Geography evolved as the study of the mutual relation between human and environment. There are two theories of it.

⇒ The German geographer Ratzel is considered as the Father of Political Geography and Human Geography. His famous book is Anthropogeography. In this book, his thoughts are identical with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Ratzel is also the father of Lebensraume concept (Lebensraume is the exact geographical region where different species evolve). In his Political Geography, he compared the state with the organism and held that expansion of boundary is a need to fulfil natural biological need.

⇒ French geographer Vidal-de-la-Blache was the founder of Possiblism. He is considered to be the real founder of the Human Geography.

⇒ The British geographer Mackinder gave the famous concept of political geography, ‘The Heartland Theory’. In his famous book Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919), he told that- One who reigns in the eastern Europe will control the heartland, one who reigns in heartland will be able to determine the circumference of the heartland and will have control over the continent, and one who reigns in the continent controls the whole world.

⇒ American geographer Carl Ortwin Sauer is considered the Father of Cultural Geography.

⇒ The British geographer, Herbertson, has divided the world into 15 Natural Regions on the basis of the mutual relation between physical features, climates and vegetation. Therefore, he is considered as the first person who studied the Natural Geography.

⇒ The universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all physical matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies and the contents of intergalactic space.

⇒ The study of universe is known as Cosmology. Cosmology = cosmos (universe) + logos (science)

⇒ The diameter of the universe is 108 light years.

⇒ After the birth of universe atoms came into existence. With these atoms dust and clouds of gases formed.

⇒ A galaxy is a vast system of billions of stars, which also contains a large number of gas clouds (mainly of hydrogen gas) and dust, isolated in space from similar systems.

⇒ There are about 100 billion galaxies (10¹1 galaxies) in the universe, and each galaxy has, on an average, 100 billion stars (10¹1 stars). So, the total number of stars in the universe is 10²² stars.

⇒ The Milky Way Galaxy is the home of the Earth and our Solar System. It is spiral in shape.

⇒ Milky Way Galaxy was formed 5 billion years after the Big Bang. The first person to see this galaxy was Galileo Galilei.

⇒ Latest known galaxy is the Dwarf Galaxy.

⇒ According to the modern thought, universe can be classified into two parts namely-(a) Atmosphere and (b) Space.

⇒ Origin of the universe is explained by the Big Bang Theory, formulated and proposed by the Belgium Roman catholic priest, physicist, astronomer and cosmologist Georges Lemaitre.

⇒ Andromeda is our nearest galaxy.

⇒ All the matter in the universe was originally a concentrated lump called primeval atom.

⇒ Big Bang was an explosion that occurred 13.798 billion years ago, leading to the formation of galaxies of stars and other cosmic bodies.

⇒ Since then, all the galaxies have been flying away from one another causing expansion of the universe.

⇒ A historical mega experiment was successfully conducted in 100 feet deep and 27 km long tunnel in Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva by European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) on 30th March, 2010 to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, in which more than 1000 scientists participated in the experiment. In this experiment Proton beams having the same velocity of light were collided to produce Higgs Boson. This mega experiment will unravel the unsolved mysteries related to the origin of the universe, which is so far known as Dark matter, Dark energy, Extra Dimension, Higgs Boson and God Particle. Basically through this mega experiment the Scientists tried to repeat the phenomena which occurred prior to 15 billion years ago known as Big Bang in the field of science.

⇒ It is now considered as the Higgs Boson which is known as God Particle in which mystery of the Universe exists, because it is also considered as the most basic unit. As a result of continued effort of 50 years, CERN on 4th July, 2012 identified the particle which is almost same to Higgs Boson. It will help to unravel several aspects of the Universe. On 14th February, 2013 the large hadron collider was closed but it has been restarted in June 2015.

⇒ Clumps of dust and gas in a nebula come together due to gravity and form stars.

⇒ Stars are made of hot burning gases. They emit light of their own and are very large and very hot.

⇒ According to NASA, Light takes about 4.35 years to reach us from Alpha centauri and 4.25 years from the nearest star Proxima Centauri.

⇒ The solar system consists of the Sun, the eight planets and their satellites (or moons), and thousands of other smaller heavenly bodies such as asteroids, comets and meteors.

⇒ The Sun is at the centre of the solar system and all these bodies are revolving around it.

⇒ The gravitational pull of the Sun keeps all the planets and other objects revolving around it. Thus, the motion of all the members of the solar system is governed mainly by the gravitational force of the Sun.

⇒ Planets revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbit.

⇒ In the solar system the planet nearest to the Sun is Mercury and the planet farthest from the Sun is Neptune (not Pluto).

⇒ The size of solar system has been estimated to at about 10⁵ A.U.

⇒ The solar system is dominated by the Sun which accounts for almost 99.9% of the matter in the whole solar system.

⇒ The Sun is also the source of all the energy in the solar system.

⇒ Pluto is a dwarf planet.

⇒ Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars are called terrestrial planets and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are called gaseous planets.

⇒ Heliocentrism, a cosmological model in which the Sun is assumed to lie at or near a central point (e.g, of the solar system or of the universe) while the Earth and other bodies revolve around it.

⇒ In the 5th century BC the Greek philosophers Philolaus and Hicetas speculated separately that the Earth was a blasphere revolving daily around some mystical “central fire” that regulated the universe. Two centuries later, Aristarchus of Samos extended this idea by proposing that the Earth and other planets moved around a definite central object, which he believed to be the Sun.

⇒ In the 2nd century AD, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria suggested that this descrepancy could be resolved if it were assumed that the Earth was fixed in position, with the Sun and other bodies revolving around it. As a result, Ptolemy’s geocentric (Earth-centred) system dominated scientific thought for some 1,400 years.

⇒ In 1444 Nicholas of Cusa again argued for the rotation of the Earth and of other heavenly bodies, but it was not until the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”) in 1543 that heliocentrism began to be reestablished. Galileo Galilei’s support of this model resulted in his famous trial before the Inquisition in 1633.

⇒ Geocentric Model, any theory of the structure of the solar system (or the universe) in which Earth is assumed to be at the centre of it all. The most highly developed geocentric model was that of Ptolemy of Alexandria (2nd century CE). It was generally accepted until the 16th century, after which it was superseded by heliocentric models such as that of Nicolaus Copernicus.

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