The study of the Earth started with the curiosity of humans. We live on Earth and are dependent on the resources of the planet, and are affected by the natural hazards. Ancient civilizations had to study rocks to understand which materials they could use to build tools, weapons, homes, etc. They had to observe volcanoes if they wanted to survive and use the fertile soil next to them to plant crops. Leonardo da Vinci observed marine fossils in the Alps and suggested that the rocks in the mountains originally formed in an ocean and later were uplifted to the current position.
Saying that, the established science of geology is relatively new compared to math and physics. Most of the early studies focused on mineral resources and natural hazards. However, the most important model for geology, theory of plate tectonics, was accepted in the 1970s. Geologists had to have information about the seafloor to understand plate movements and this was achieved when we had submarines to survey the shape and magnetic properties of the ocean floor.
Good question! I think we started just because we were curious, or we were hungry, and thus we started moving around the continents to find places with better climates, better crops, better animals we could use for our purposes. Then, it probably came natural to draw maps of path, coasts, cities, to show to other people where that certain thing come from, or how to get to that specific village, et voilà, geography had started.
I looked up in the internet and found that the first map of the known world is from about 500 years BC, but even more fascinating is that, in general, the first human made map dated about 16000 BC, and it is a map of the sky, with its stars and planets. This is really amazing, isn’t it? Man kind always surprises me 🙂
That’s a really great question! And I think Daniel and Anna gave great answers. I’ll just throw in my two cents. I think humans are naturally curious and extending from that will keep on exploring and keep on pushing into new frontiers until there is nothing else to explore (if that’s even possible!?! :D). There aren’t many places on Earth that haven’t been explored these days so we’ve turned to space. And I think that with this sense of curiosity comes an urge or need to understand why the universe works in the mysterious ways that it does. So, ancient civilizations where geologists to some extent because they mined the flint/stone for their tools to hunt and gather. And they obviously didn’t know what was going on geologically, but I find that a lot of these cultures used religion to try to understand specific events (such as volcanic eruptions or earthquakes) or geologic structures. The one that immediately comes to mind is Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (Native American myth here: http://www.nps.gov/deto/historyculture/first-stories.htm). And then as we move towards the present you have more and more geologists studying the Earth and really accelerating our knowledge of our solar system and beyond.
The thing about geology that I really like is that it takes from so many other disciplines. Geology wouldn’t exist if there were no such subjects as math, chemistry, physics, etc. because everything in geology is based on these core subjects. And, as Daniel pointed out, even though many people have been studying Earth for a long time, modern geology we know today really just got started/unified in the 1970s with the theory of plate tectonics.
You might have heard the saying ‘knowledge is power’. I see it as a natural progression which helped satisfy the human curiosity. Just imagine living on the Earth without knowing how and why things happen. As Jesse and Daniel rightly mentioned, modern geology came into play in the 1970s.
Great question! Here’s my thoughts building on what Anna, Jesse, Daniel and Denise have said:
A lot of people have helped to shape geology as a field. Here are some of the most famous:
William Smith was a mining surveyor in England in 1790, and realised that that fossils were useful for identifying different rock formations. He did this whilst he was travelling around England working on the canals, and he mad the first geological map of Britain, which is now displayed at Burlington House in London.
Charles Lyell was a Scottish geologist in the 1800s. He believed that the processes that alter the Earth are the same through time (so processes that happened in the past still exist today); therefore his ‘version’ of geology was called uniformitarianism. Lyell also wrote the ”Principles of Geology” which was based on field observations he made, and he was considered one of the most important geologists of his era. Lyell also came up with the saying “the past is the key to the present”, which helps to sum up uniformitarianism as a geological principle.
James Hutton was another Scottish geologist from the 1700s. He believed that the Earth was formed through different processes interacting together like erosion and mountain building processes.
Alfred Russell Wallace is one of my favourite scientists. He is most famous for publishing things about evolution through natural selection (idea that organisms have features dependent on their environment) with ideas totally different from those of Charles Darwin.. Alfred Russell Wallace went on a field trip around South East Asia, and whilst he was there he noticed changes in the pattern of animals living around around the Malay archipelago. He then proposed a theory where there was an imaginary line dividing the region in two major parts. This is known as Wallace’s line, and marks the boundary between animals found in Australia and Asia.
Continental drift (movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates) was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. He thought that the Earth’s continents were once joined together but then moved apart slowly over millions of years. This was because similar fossils and rocks on continents far away from each other were found e.g. in Africa and South America. It took a long time for his theory to become accepted.
The study of the Earth started with the curiosity of humans. We live on Earth and are dependent on the resources of the planet, and are affected by the natural hazards. Ancient civilizations had to study rocks to understand which materials they could use to build tools, weapons, homes, etc. They had to observe volcanoes if they wanted to survive and use the fertile soil next to them to plant crops. Leonardo da Vinci observed marine fossils in the Alps and suggested that the rocks in the mountains originally formed in an ocean and later were uplifted to the current position.
Saying that, the established science of geology is relatively new compared to math and physics. Most of the early studies focused on mineral resources and natural hazards. However, the most important model for geology, theory of plate tectonics, was accepted in the 1970s. Geologists had to have information about the seafloor to understand plate movements and this was achieved when we had submarines to survey the shape and magnetic properties of the ocean floor.
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Good question! I think we started just because we were curious, or we were hungry, and thus we started moving around the continents to find places with better climates, better crops, better animals we could use for our purposes. Then, it probably came natural to draw maps of path, coasts, cities, to show to other people where that certain thing come from, or how to get to that specific village, et voilà, geography had started.
I looked up in the internet and found that the first map of the known world is from about 500 years BC, but even more fascinating is that, in general, the first human made map dated about 16000 BC, and it is a map of the sky, with its stars and planets. This is really amazing, isn’t it? Man kind always surprises me 🙂
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That’s a really great question! And I think Daniel and Anna gave great answers. I’ll just throw in my two cents. I think humans are naturally curious and extending from that will keep on exploring and keep on pushing into new frontiers until there is nothing else to explore (if that’s even possible!?! :D). There aren’t many places on Earth that haven’t been explored these days so we’ve turned to space. And I think that with this sense of curiosity comes an urge or need to understand why the universe works in the mysterious ways that it does. So, ancient civilizations where geologists to some extent because they mined the flint/stone for their tools to hunt and gather. And they obviously didn’t know what was going on geologically, but I find that a lot of these cultures used religion to try to understand specific events (such as volcanic eruptions or earthquakes) or geologic structures. The one that immediately comes to mind is Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (Native American myth here: http://www.nps.gov/deto/historyculture/first-stories.htm). And then as we move towards the present you have more and more geologists studying the Earth and really accelerating our knowledge of our solar system and beyond.
The thing about geology that I really like is that it takes from so many other disciplines. Geology wouldn’t exist if there were no such subjects as math, chemistry, physics, etc. because everything in geology is based on these core subjects. And, as Daniel pointed out, even though many people have been studying Earth for a long time, modern geology we know today really just got started/unified in the 1970s with the theory of plate tectonics.
0
You might have heard the saying ‘knowledge is power’. I see it as a natural progression which helped satisfy the human curiosity. Just imagine living on the Earth without knowing how and why things happen. As Jesse and Daniel rightly mentioned, modern geology came into play in the 1970s.
0
Great question! Here’s my thoughts building on what Anna, Jesse, Daniel and Denise have said:
A lot of people have helped to shape geology as a field. Here are some of the most famous:
William Smith was a mining surveyor in England in 1790, and realised that that fossils were useful for identifying different rock formations. He did this whilst he was travelling around England working on the canals, and he mad the first geological map of Britain, which is now displayed at Burlington House in London.
Charles Lyell was a Scottish geologist in the 1800s. He believed that the processes that alter the Earth are the same through time (so processes that happened in the past still exist today); therefore his ‘version’ of geology was called uniformitarianism. Lyell also wrote the ”Principles of Geology” which was based on field observations he made, and he was considered one of the most important geologists of his era. Lyell also came up with the saying “the past is the key to the present”, which helps to sum up uniformitarianism as a geological principle.
James Hutton was another Scottish geologist from the 1700s. He believed that the Earth was formed through different processes interacting together like erosion and mountain building processes.
Alfred Russell Wallace is one of my favourite scientists. He is most famous for publishing things about evolution through natural selection (idea that organisms have features dependent on their environment) with ideas totally different from those of Charles Darwin.. Alfred Russell Wallace went on a field trip around South East Asia, and whilst he was there he noticed changes in the pattern of animals living around around the Malay archipelago. He then proposed a theory where there was an imaginary line dividing the region in two major parts. This is known as Wallace’s line, and marks the boundary between animals found in Australia and Asia.
Continental drift (movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates) was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. He thought that the Earth’s continents were once joined together but then moved apart slowly over millions of years. This was because similar fossils and rocks on continents far away from each other were found e.g. in Africa and South America. It took a long time for his theory to become accepted.
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