History
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Map Types
Map Features
Map Features
100
Who first calculated the circumference of the earth based on the angle of the sun in the city of Syene and the city of Alexandria (both in Egypt) at the same time of day and his knowledge of the distance between the two cities as well as his knowledge of basic geometry (360 degrees in a circle)?
BONUS 100: What word did he coin?
Eratosthenes, the head librarian in Alexandria (a center of Greek learning) in the 200s BC.
BONUS: Geography
100
Why is it important to check the date of a map you are viewing.
Geography is not set in stone. Thus Geography is not the study of hard eternal facts. The nature of Geography is change. Physical changes gradually occur to the earth over a span of years. People groups move, shift, and have conflict with each other, changing political boundaries. New roads, buildings, and infrastructure are built every day.
A new and updated map is best for understanding the current political situation, or getting directions to the nearest Taco Bell.
Meanwhile an old map is best for understanding the perceptions of people in the past.
100
Why are "all maps lies"?
While "lie" might be a bit dramatic, all flat maps are a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional globe, resulting in the need to make adjustments to it visually for it to function properly. This can make a make entirely accurate in some areas (such as lattitude/longitude or the position of certain cities) but warp others (Greenland is NOT nearly the same size as Africa!).
100
On a compass rose, which cardinal direction points to the left?
West
200
The origin of Key Lime Pie is divided between which two locations?
The Florida Keys, where Key Limes are grown. The local claim is that the pie was invented by a rich landowner's aunt or cook, who got the idea from seeing Mexican sailors use the limes to flavor a similar kind of dessert. When poor crops moved lime sales to California and Mexico, the people of Florida became particularly invested in this story, even putting it in tourist pamphlets.
Far to the north, in New York City, the Borden Company, famous for its sweetened condensed milk, takes credit for one of the earliest versions of the recipe, albeit with lemons instead of limes. The cynical historian might then conjecture that the key lime pie story was purely an invention to benefit not the lime farmers, but the corporate producers in New York.
200
How does the physical geography of the earth affect the study of geography?
There are many answers to this question.
An example:
The country The Gambia is a small coastal African country entirely surrounded by Senegal, except for where it touches the Atlantic Ocean. The story, most likely apocryphal, is that the British sailed up the Gambia river and fired their cannons to mark the boundary of their claim around the river. Why make a country around a single river? To stake a claim on the valuable commodity that the river offered the British, namely an easy access into the interior of the continent in order to purchase slaves.
200
What kind of map shows elements of an areas terrain, such as elevation data or the varying depths of a lake or the exact contours of a river?
Topographic Map
200
On the big map in the classroom, indicate where the Legend and Scale are found. What is the scale of this map?
Bottom Left Corner.
Scale is roughly 1 inch = 300 miles
300
Before the invention of reliable map technologies, how did the earliest peoples navigate the world?
People relied on familiar and well trodden routes between places, meaning that there were far fewer roads and paths to take, meaning fewer choices for the traveler to make.
People also relied heavily on oral traditions and later on written accounts, tracking notable land features, towns, and rudimentary descriptions of the people, animals, and plants one would encounter in a place, along with basic concepts of distance and time to travel between places
300
How do political changes affect our study of geography, give an example.
There are many answers to this question.
An example:
When Britain was forced, due to the financial strain of World War II, to promise India its independence in exchange for support in the war, they opened the door for a political group of Indian Muslims to demand to be given a separate nation state from the majority Hindu population of India. Britain, still in charge, drew the lines for the two nations, one for the Hindus, still to be called India, the other Pakistan, for the Muslims.
In drawing the line they split a region, called the Punjab, where Muslims and Hindus lived intermixed, into two halves in the matter of a day. This resulted in one of the messiest and largest human migrations ever recorded. Over 11 million people, suddenly caught on the wrong side of the border, depending on their religion, were forced to flee. Over 1 million people lost their lives in the chaos, much of which was due to religious persecution on both sides. It also resulted in a short war between 1947-48, in which there were thirty thousand casualties.
300
What kind of map is this?
A Thematic Map, instead of being useful for navigation as most maps are, is useful for displaying information about a place, as with the map of Minnesota displaying wealth distribution by county.
300
What is the Equator? Point to it on the big map.
Zero degrees latitude.
Latitude lines are the ones that run horizontally or lie on the east/west axis. Zero is at the earth's center of mass, and each of the poles is at 90 degrees. Positive latitudes are north of the equator. Negative latitudes are south of the equator. This line separates the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
400
Why is our continent called "America"?
While the first voyages to America were made by Christopher Columbus at the very end of the 15th Century, it was another explorer, just a decade after Columbus, Italian born Amerigo Vespucci, who would receive the honor of having two continents named after himself.
This is due to Vespucci's German publisher, Martin Waldseemuller, who was also publishing a print of a newly updated world map, one of the first to include America. Waldseemuller, a humble mapmaker who would never set foot on the soil of the new world, made the choice to name it America, unwittingly making history in the process and displaying the power and authority of maps in crafting our perspective on reality.
400
How does the study of cultural change affect our study of geography? Give an example.
There are many answers to this question.
An example:
An interesting way to blow your mental categories is to compare things that were happening at the same time in vastly distant places across the globe.
By the birth of Jesus, Chinese dynastic rule was already over 2000 years old and had already invented paper, the compass, hydraulics, metal gears, acupuncture, chopsticks, crossbows, football, firecrackers, harmonicas, gas lighting, kites, nail polish, soy sauce, stir fry, tea, and the game of chess.
The last vikings settled in Greenland, Gutenberg invents the printing press, the Maya build one of the largest and most advanced cities in the world, Tenochtitlan, on a man-made island in modern day Mexico, the Inca Empire in south America reached its height when it builds Machu Pichu, the Forbidden City is built in Beijing China, the Portuguese establish the African slave trade, Joan of Arc is burned at the stake, the Mongol Empire was in its final days, the Ottoman Empire rose up and destroyed the last vestige of the old Roman Empire when it overtook the city of Constantinople, and Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, are born all within the first half of the 15th Century.
Shakespeare was alive when the British began settling America, where the Spanish had already been for 100 years. You could already visit the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico when the Pilgrims landed.
Nintendo was founded in Japan as a toy company in the late 19th century, when the Eiffel Tower in Paris was completed, not long after the American Civil War.
There is an island off the coast of India, called North Sentinel Island, that still rely on stone age tools, hunt and fight with bows and arrows, and live in a pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer culture to this day.
400
What projection of the world map is this?
Goode Homolosine Projection
400
What is the Prime Meridian? Point to it on the big map.
Zero degrees longitude.
Longitude lines are the ones that run vertically or lie on the north/south axis. The Prime Meridian is centered on a suburb of London, UK, called Greenwich. Longitude lines are negative to the west of the line and positive to the east, going all the way to 179 degrees, before hitting the Prime Meridian again. This line separates the Western and Eastern Hemispheres.
500
What is one of the earliest and best kept records of an ancient "travelogue"?
Homer's The Odyssey, being the epic tale of Odysseus who travels home across the sea and encounters many strange and fantastical dangers along the way, including monsters and gods that eventually kill off his whole crew. While many of the details of the story are fictional, the route that is recorded is faithful to the shape of the Aegean Sea (in the Mediterranean between modern day Greece and Turkey).
This story not only begins a long tradition of literature of fictional journeys to real locales (many early explorers to America included mythological creatures they claimed to encounter, fictional versions of their grand feats - think John Smith and Pocahontas - and inflated estimates of the riches and gold found), but it also reveals a window onto earlier generations of people and their curiosity about the shape and makeup of the world.
500
How do economics affect the study of geography? Give an example.
It wasn't for the sake of exploration that Christopher Columbus set out in 1492 westward. He was on a funded mission to find a possibly valuable trade route for the Spanish to the east (China and India), in order for Spain to compete with its economic rival Portugal, which had a claim on the route around the tip of Africa. The subsequent settlement of America by Europeans was almost wholly due to the imagined economic gain to be had from the unique resources (such as tobacco, sugar cane, and later cotton) that could be grown there.
500
What projection of the world map is this?
Mercator Projection
500
What city lies on the coordinates 60 degrees north and 30 degrees east?
St. Petersburg, Russia
500
What are the coordinates, roughly, for the city of Manila?
15 degrees north and 120 degrees east.
