Movement

Movement >> see Time [category: Social Studies Concepts]

Concept: Movement & Geography

Time, Distance, Communication & Movement

• time measured by distance
• distance defined by geography
  • barriers to movement
  • facilitators to movement
  • see Roman map
• technological advance is to overcome barriers to movement of geography and distance
• See also:
  • Geography
  • Social Studies Skills

Forms of Human Movement

• land
  • walking / running
    • Greece: marathona
    • Inca runners served to communicate across empire
  • animal propulsion
    • domestication of animals for transport
• water
  • rivers
    • rivers = highway and a moat
  • coastal travel
  • transoceanic travel
• currents
  • • easiest movement by boats designed to flow with the current
    • ex. Babylonian inflatable boats made of animal skin/ guts used to float down Euphrates River
  • paddle/ oars
    • liquid
• wind & sail
• mechanized propulsion

Animal Propulsion

• • horses
    • prior to domestication horses were hunted for food
  • cattle
  • camels
    • ability to cross large distances with heavy loads (25-30 miles / day)
    • ability to survive distances without water
      • related to metabolism and not the "hump" which is made of fat and provides energy (food) and not water
      • ability to withstand absence of water related to conserve water and to adjust its body temperature in order to avoid sweating
    • originally from the Americas: related to the Llama
    • sources:
      • How long can a camel go without water?
    • migrated to Asia where they were domesticated in central Asia
    • camels to Arabia
    • camels to Nile and Sahara/ Sub-Sahara Africa

Movement by water

See: Boat History (wiki)

Human-Powered Boats

• poles for propulsion
• oars & paddles
  • canoes
    • dugout canoes
    • bark canoes
    • kayaks
  • large canoes & catamarans
  • catamaran designed for stability
• sail & wind-powered propulsion
  • square sail
  • lateen sail
• mechanized propulsion

Sail

Priests traveling across kealakekua bay for first contact rituals (wiki)

• wind propulsion
• Polynesian catamarans
• Egypt << see Egypt outline for boats, ropes, etc.

History of human movement

• migration & land bridges
• development of boats
  • implied evidence of early use of boats:
    • settlement of Crete c. 130,000 BC
    • settlement of Australia, c. 40,000 BC
• >> to do

Navigation

• Polynesian navigation
  • See Polynesian Navigation (wiki)

Mechanized Transportation

• revolution in distance and time
• cultural diffusion accelerated
• steamboats
  • prior to steam boats, the Mississippi River provided transportation in one direction only, downstream. With steam, boats could journy upstream, which allowed for trade to flow both north and south.
    • see [Steamboats of the Mississippi]
• railroads caused need for time zones
  • before the need to create regular schedules across great distances, time was measured locally by the position of the sun
  • with rapid movement by rail, the need for a comman, relative measurement of time became important in order to organize the rail system and its schedules: time zones were the solution, creating a single period of time across a large distance that could be calibrated against other time "zones"
• local rail / trolleys
• automobiles
• trucks
• airplanes

Communication & Time, Space & Distance

• • communication across distance was a function of movement
  • writing revolutionizes time by bringing distances together through communication across distance
  • with new forms of transportation, communication was speeded over time (horse, boat, sail, railroad, airplane, etc)
• modern communications revolution
• speed of correspondences measured by distance (letter-writing)
• telegraph revolutionizes ability to send messages over distance instantaneously
  • trans-Atlantic cable
    • origins of the Associated Press
  • Morse Code
  • photographs transmitted by telegraph
• telephone
  • transmission of voice over distance (still using wires)
• radio
  • transmission of voice or code over distance without wires
• television
  • transmission of moving or live images over distance without wires
• facsimile machines
  • ability to send copies of documents over telephone lines
• cellular phones
  • more practical than radio
• internet