“Human geography is the synthetic study of the relationship between human societies and earth’s surface”. – Ratzel. Elucidate.

Approach

• Define human geography in the introduction.
• Relation between human society and earth’s surface with examples.
• Conclusion.

Answer

Human geography studies “the relationship between the physical/natural and the human worlds, the spatial distributions of human phenomena and how they come about, the social and economic differences between different parts of the world”.

The core concern of geography as a discipline is to understand the earth as the home of human beings and to study all those elements which have sustained them.

In human geography, we study how human activities make use of natural/physical elements available on the earth’s surface to construct socio-cultural elements.

The physical elements are landforms, soils, climate, water, natural vegetation and diverse flora and fauna have been used by humans to create Houses, villages, cities, road-rail networks, industries, farms, ports, items of our daily use and all other elements of material culture.

Thus in human geography, we study the impact of man on the environment and that of the environment on man.