Nature of Human Geography
What is Human Geography?
Human geography studies how humans interact with the physical environment and how they create their own social and cultural environments.
In Class 11, you learned about the physical environment, which includes landforms, soils, climate, water, natural vegetation, and various plants and animals.
Elements Created by Humans:
Think about all the things humans have made using resources from the environment: houses, villages, cities, roads, railways, industries, farms, ports, and items we use every day.
Interacting with the Environment
Humans use technology to interact with the environment. Technology shows how advanced a society is.
Understanding natural laws has been crucial. For example:
Knowing about friction and heat helped us discover fire.
Understanding DNA and genetics helped us fight diseases.
Using aerodynamics, we built faster airplanes.
Early Human Interaction - Environmental Determinism
Early humans were heavily influenced by nature because they had very basic technology.
They adapted to nature, worshipped it, and lived in harmony with it.
This stage is called environmental determinism, where humans followed nature's rules.