Geography vs History
 

There's some overlap between the two subjects, clearly, but which do you prefer and why?

History by a long shot. Geography is boring and I'm bad at it anyway.

I love geography. Contrary to what lots of people think, it's not really about maps, places, capital cities etc. Well, it is, but it's about far more than that. It's also about climate change, environment, biodiversity, social structures within cities and countries, urban decay, how cities juxtapose rich and poor etc, and how all these relate to one another. You have human and physical geography.

I'm a big fan of history as well, and of course all of these sorts of subjects are interrelated.

By the way, I opted for geography at school, when we had to select subjects to study at the higher level. I wanted to pick history too but they were both part of the same block.

I am a history teacher though geography does fall under my social sciences certification. History by far fascinates me. Geography is the study of location and includes aspects of sociology. History includes a vast array of interesting information from any country or time period. History is easier to teach and find a way to interest students while geography is hard to go beyond maps and textbooks.

Yeah, agree with lots of that. Geography is wide-ranging but clearly not as vast as history. You're bang on about social science as well - geography is part of my social science degree.

My biggest hurdle with Geography is memorisation of locations. My sense of direction is so bad that I might as well not have one at all. ...Not that History and all of its dates and numbers is much better, but at least the subject itself is more entertaining than it is frustrating for me.

I get ya. It's not always easy to maintain your bearings with geography.

On a minor note, have you ever played Mario's Time Machine or Mario Is Missing? They deal with history and geography respectively, and were a fun play back in the day. They got poor reviews but I enjoyed them as far as "edutainment" games so.

History is interesting because its basically a story. Where humans came to be, and what every country did over time. Basically people killing each other in wars for thousands of years.

Good post. I do find it funny how obsessed you are with war and murder though :) I am too.

I'm doing a course on empires now. It's something I always wanted to study in more depth. You guys' history is inextricably linked with empire - many of your ancestors are Europeans (from the Old World).

Basically if you like watching TV shows, reading comics, or stories in anything...I don't see why you wouldn't like history.

Its basically a real-life story of people and everything that has happened. Also since in real life the world is full of gray's since there are no real "good guys" or "bad guys" in the real world...except maybe Hitler, so all the other world leaders were motivated by shades of gray.

Although I am most interested in history from about 1700 to present, I also like really ancient history, like before the year 1000. Its so fascinating to think of early man and how we just started. Its hard to believe how long it took humans to come to be, especially since this is not just the year 2014...modern humans have been around for what...maybe 10,000 years? This really should be the year 10,014. Haha.

Mostly a good post again. I knew that history interested you when you created the 'glorious time period' topic.

As you imply, history is the source of everything, really. Without history we would have no reference point for the present and no past to learn from and try to build on. It truly is all-encompassing.

But to take geography to its base level (places and monuments etc), without land and towns and cities there would be no site for all of these historical events to be shaped. That's why history, geography, sociology, environmentalism etc are all wonderfully interrelated and can't really exist without each other. They can't exist in isolation.

History for sure. All things are connected and everything repeats. There's so many patterns if you know where to look, and if you study the past, you can absolutely predict the future. It's like a super-power you can actually give yourself. I used to murder that class and I never even did any homework, I just paid attention. Like most things, a lot of it has since been nudged out of my memory by comic books, but I can recall a lot of it sometimes.

Like you said, Dave, there's plenty of overlap between the two. I'm pretty good at remembering What Happened and Why, and less good at remembering Where, though, so there ya go. :)

Fair enough mate. I think it's fair to say that both subjects are brilliant but the consensus so far is that history is superior.

Well, maybe easier on the whole to grasp for some folks.

Well, a lot of history is narrative and fact. Geography overlaps more easily with sociology (human geography) and the environment (physical geography). So lots of it is based around theory - it's not really quite as easy to learn things or memorise. Just my take.

Geography also being more fluid, while history, while sometimes open to interpretation, is more simple fact. Like, topography changes, broders change, climates change, ecosystems change, but when Stuff Happens, it stays that way as far as the bare facts of what, where, when, and why. :)

They're pretty joined at the hip, though. I personally was always just better at straight-up History. But then, in high school I had three years of History (I had to repeat one year because it was first period and I was constantly, constantly late :lol:) and only one year of Geography, so I'm sure exposure has a lot to do with it, too. :)

I agree, Leo. History was always one of my strong subjects, too. In high school, we had a combined history/literature course (I was in an advanced learning program called LEAP) that was really interesting. We learned how literature and history were linked through various time-periods and countries, and had projects and literary reading assignments based on the period of history we were studying. Awesome class!

My favorite time periods are ancient Greece/Rome, Egypt, and Europe from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Basically all the really ancient stuff. Druids, henges, and pagan Britain also fascinate me. Might be my family lineage has something to do with it- I'm primarily of Irish/English/Scottish descent. With some French and German thrown in for good measure. (But I claim my Irish blood over everything else, since it can be traced as far back as 1100's.)

That leads me to a question for you guys. What about family history? Geneology is basically the study of the history of one's own family through time. Where it came from, what events shaped it or it was involved with, even famous family members who helped shape history itself. What do you all think of family history?

History, but it's also fascinating to watch how kingdoms and countries have changed through the centuries.

I wasn't very good with either geography or history in school; mainly because the way it was taught just bored me so I didn't apply myself. Now that I'm not in school, I have a much keener interest in history and sociology etc because I'm able to go for the parts that interest me.

I tend to think that while it's useful, it has a very big flaw in that it doesn't account for people having affairs. On paper, my ancestry should be 100% Irish... but my great-grandmother actually had an affair with a fly-by-night fellow of Italian descent (which is how she got pregnant with my grandmother)... and none of that's on paper.

So yeah, I understand its purpose but as I said, I do think it's got a fairly big flaw in that it can't account for everything in a persons' genealogical background.

I was never interested in either subject in school as they always bored me, but I do realize both are important. History is knowing what happened and why it happened while geography is about knowing where places are and how to get there as well as how the countries were started. Family history is also important because it's interesting to see where you come from and how your family tree started.