2. Geography is a discipline that studies various natural and human phenomena in the geographical environment of the earth's surface and their relationships. Geography is a comprehensive basic subject.
3. The West: In the 2nd century BC, Eratosthenes, an ancient Greek scholar, first synthesized the word geo+graphica, meaning "geography" or "description of the earth", and wrote the first monograph named Geography in the West.
4. East: In the literature left by our ancestors, the word "geography" first appeared in the Book of Changes, which was written in the 4th century BC, and there was a sentence of "looking up at astronomy and overlooking geography". Wang Chong, a thinker in the Eastern Han Dynasty, made a thorough study of astronomy and geography. His explanation is: "There is a saying that there are sun, moon and stars in the sky and mountains, rivers and valleys on the ground.
5. The concept of "geography" in ancient China is completely different from the concept of "geography" today. The concept of "geography" in ancient China contains a lot of geomantic contents, and books about geomantic contents often use the name "geography". According to the concept of "geography" in modern concepts, the ancient books that described related contents earlier included Shangshu Gong Yu and Shan Hai Jing. , and mainly discusses the measurement methods and related data about the shape and size of the earth, or describes the known regions and countries. The word "geography" is not used in such books.