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:
Forms of Human Movement
- land
- walking / running
- Greece: marathona
- Inca runners served to communicate across empire
- animal propulsion
- domestication of animals for transport
- walking / running
- water
- rivers
- rivers = highway and a moat
- coastal travel
- transoceanic travel
- rivers
- 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:
- migrated to Asia where they were domesticated in central Asia
- camels to Arabia
- camels to Nile and Sahara/ Sub-Sahara Africa
- horses
Movement by water
- Buoyancy / floating
- see Buoyancy (wiki)
- History of boats:
- See: Boat History (wiki)
Human-Powered Boats
- poles for propulsion
- rafts
- oars & paddles
- canoes
- dugout canoes
- bark canoes
- kayaks
- large canoes & catamarans
- catamaran designed for stability
- canoes
- sail & wind-powered propulsion
- square sail
- lateen sail
- mechanized propulsion
Sail
- 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
- implied evidence of early use of boats:
- >> to do
- Polynesian navigation
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.
- 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
- trans-Atlantic cable
- 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