A Manual of Ancient Geography (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3MANUAL OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY. CHAPTER I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION; HISTORY: ETHNOGRAPHY: NOMENCLATURE. 1. Idea and Scope of Ancient Geography.?The natural formation of individual parts of the earth's surface, to ascertain which forms the immediate object of the Science of Geography, is by no means free from changes, though such for the most part take extremely long periods of time to their fulfilment, and only in exceptional cases (as, for example, those which are wrought by volcanic forces) become at once visible to the observation of races living at the time. Compared with this, in its main features almost unchangeable groundwork, the historical element in geography, which is indispensable to the understanding of the history of mankind, bears a fluctuating character subject to violent and at times sudden changes; such changes however always following one law, which differs to an extraordinary extent according to times and particular localities. For if the boundaries and extent of states usually change in shorter periods, and therefore, as the old Greek geographers were the first to assert, are ofonly subordinate importance for the knowledge of countries, it is clear also that these changes influence only in a very limited degree the proportionately far more permanent local distribution of individual nations. On this account the ethnographical element comes to the front in the historical side of the question sooner than the narrower political element. The more so that numerous instances testify to the fact that many regions, especially inaccessible highlands, and outlying islands, have maintained inhabitants of one and the same stock in unbroken succession of generations from the time of the earliest historical traditions down to the present day. 2. But besides this, over the greater part ...