Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1
I always read that the world, land and water, was spherical. . . . Now I observed so much divergence, that I
began to hold different views about the world and I found it was not round . . . but pear shaped, round except
where it has a nipple, for there it is taller, or as if one had a round ball and, on one side, it should be like a
woman's breast, and this nipple part is the highest and closest to Heaven.
—Christopher Columbus,
from the log of his third voyage (1498)
In a fleeting instant of historical time, the world has seen transforming events flit across its television
screens. The crumbling of the Berlin Wall and, with it, the unification of West and East Germany. The war
for Kuwait in the Persian Gulf. SCUD missiles flying into Israel. Arabs and Israelis talking peace. Serbs and
Croats at each other's throats. Armenians and Azerbaijanis killing one another over a centuries-old conflict.
And most extraordinary of all, the demise of the Soviet Union as we have known it for most of this century.
In the United States, the cover of
Newsweek
magazine asks, “Was Cleopatra Black?” And elsewhere
across America, on campuses and in state education departments, debates rage over the multicultural cur-
riculum, emphasizing the historical roots of diverse ethnic groups, and “Afrocentrism,” a field of study that
emphasizes the contributions of early African civilizations. At the same time, many Americans seek new
labels for themselves: African American, Lithuanian American, Ukrainian American.
Suddenly, geography commands center-stage attention, because at their heart, all of these issues are ques-
tions of geography.
