The Five Themes of Geography

The Five Themes of Geography are: Location – Absolute points on a map or grid or Relative to where something may be; Place – The physical and/or human characteristics of a locations; Human/Environment Interactions – How humans have impacted the landscape or environment; Relationship between places Movement – How humans interact on the earth (i.e. how they communicate over distance (short or long)) and Regions – a unit of space that has commonalities defined by physical, human and environmental geography. The Explorers of the New World may have not known what the Five Themes of Geography were but they quickly learned. Of the five themes the ones that they all took advantage of was the physical Location and Place as they learned to navigate to and from as well as through their new environments. Over Time the explorers began to discover the relationships within their environments and original occupants of the lands as well as the regions in which they now occupied.

Early explorers of the North American East Coast quickly learned whose territory was whose as evidenced in the travels of country sponsored explorations of the east coast of the New World, with the exception of De Soto who traversed the interior of the eastern and southern areas. The Spanish laid claim to what is modern day Florida, the French stayed near the north eastern areas in and near modern day Canada and the Dutch, English and Swedes could be found in the north eastern Areas of modern day U.S.A. Each claimed certain parts of the New World and each in a way respected the boundaries of these areas. Relatively speaking, these same areas were not only divided by country stakes but sometimes by beliefs or heritage (i.e. Puritans, Protestants, Catholics, etc.) which is ...

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...Old World (Europe) or amongst the settled areas of North America. Communications with the Old World was inherently dependent on Ships and the person(s) traveling. Trips transversing the Atlantic could take up to a year, which meant that if you lived in Jamestown before the Mid 1600’s you would more than likely be dead before your message got to whom you wanted it to go and get a reply. Land communications was either done on foot or by horse. If you needed to contact someone in another settlement you would either have to take it yourself or hope that someone would be traveling in that direction to deliver the message. Both the means of communications (abroad or amongst the settlements) were very slow and sometimes unreliable.

Works Cited

1. Carville Earl, “Environment, disease and mortality in early Virginia,” Journal of Historical Geography 5, 4 (1979): 365-390