Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
What's the Difference Between a Peninsula and a Cape?
The word
peninsula
comes from the Latin
paene
for “almost” and
insulae
for “island.” A peninsula is liter-
ally “almost an island,” or a piece of land that is surrounded on most sides by water. One way to visualize
a peninsula is as a finger of land reaching out to test the water. A cape (derived from the Latin word
caput
for “head”) is a head or pointed piece of land that also sticks out into the water. (Small capes can be called
spits or points.) One misnamed cape is Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which is a true peninsula. But British
sea captain Bartholomew Gosnold, sailing the waters in 1602, christened it Cape Cod.
Other examples of true peninsulas in North America are the state of Florida, Baja California—the nar-
row strip of land separated from the rest of Mexico by the Gulf of California—and the Alaska Peninsula,
which stretches out into the Bering Sea.
Some geographers call all of Europe a peninsula of Asia, which shows that geographic descriptions
can be stretched. Within Europe itself, there are several noteworthy peninsulas. Boot-shaped Italy is an ex-
ample of a pure peninsula, as is the Scandinavian Peninsula, divided into Norway and Sweden. Less typic-
al of true peninsulas are the Iberian Peninsula, occupied by Spain and Portugal, and the Balkan Peninsula,
which is divided between the states of Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria. Although both
the Iberian and Balkan peninsulas are bodies of land jutting out into the water, neither has the long, narrow
shape characteristic of a true peninsula.
Rivers Run, but Can They Drown?
Geographically speaking, the answer is yes.
Rias
are “drowned rivers.” How can something made out of
water drown?
One of the greatest influences on coastlines is the change in sea levels. When the sea rises, the existing
terrain is literally drowned, or covered in water. After the last ice age, in many places around the world,
the seas rose significantly, often submerging or “drowning” previous river valleys. Instead of emptying
into the ocean, the mouth of the river was submerged beneath the ocean's waters. Chesapeake Bay, on the
Atlantic coast of the United States, is one of the world's largest rias. It is the drowned mouth of the Susque-
hanna River.
Statistically speaking, the rivers of the world are fairly insignificant. Oceans hold more than 97 percent
of the world's water, glaciers contain about 2 percent. What little surface water there is on earth—which
amounts to the remaining 0.2 percent of the world's total water supply—is mostly locked up in lakes.
Rivers and streams contain a small fraction of all the earth's water.
But sometimes statistics are meaningless. It is simple to see that rivers have been central to the devel-
opment of early civilizations. In particular, the Mesopotamian societies centered on the Tigris-Euphrates,
the Egyptian centered on the Nile, and the earliest Chinese centered on the Huang Ho. Initially, these rivers
provided fresh water for human and animal consumption, irrigation as agriculture gradually developed,
food in the form of fish, and fast, easy transportation.
The World's Longest Rivers
Nile
Originating in the mountains of East Africa, the world's longest river begins in two separate
streams: the White Nile, with a headstream in Burundi above Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria); and the
