The modern geography is the whole complex of natural and social sciences. Today scientists saved up the large volume of knowledge of Earth, and the science geography has own, long and interesting, the history of origin.
Geography in the ancient time
The geography can be considered one of the most ancient sciences because no other knowledge was so important to the person as knowledge of the world around device. Ability to be guided by areas, to look for sources of water, a shelter, to forecast the weather – all this was necessary for the person for survival.
And though prototypes of cards are the drawings on skins representing site plan – were at primitive people, the geography long time was not science in full sense. If the science formulates laws of the phenomena and answers the question "why?", then the geography throughout the long period of the existence sought to describe the phenomena rather, that is to answer the questions "what?" and "where?". Besides, in antiquity the geography was closely connected with other sciences including humanitarian: quite often the question of a form of Earth or its situation in the solar system carried more philosophical, than natural science character.
Achievements of ancient geographers
In spite of the fact that ancient geographers had not much opportunities to experimentally investigate the various phenomena, they after all managed to achieve certain success. So in Ancient Egypt, thanks to regular astronomical observations, scientists could determine very precisely duration of year, also in Egypt the land registry was created. The set of important discoveries was made in Ancient Greece. For example, Greeks assumed that Earth has the sphere form. Essential arguments in favor of this point of view were stated by Aristotle, and Aristarkh Samossky for the first time designated approximate distance from Earth to the Sun. Greeks began to use parallels and meridians and also learned to determine geographical coordinates. Filosof-stoik Kratet from Malla for the first time created globe model. The most ancient people actively explored the world around, going to sea and overland travel. Many scientists (Herodotus, Strabo, Ptolemaeus) tried to systematize the available knowledge of Earth in the works. For example, in Claudius Ptolemaeus's work "Geography" data on 8000 place names were collected and also coordinates of nearly four hundred points were specified. Also the main directions of geographical science which were developed subsequently by many talented scientists were outlined in Ancient Greece.