Movement

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>> see Time [category: Social Studies Concepts]

Movement & Geography

Time, Distance, Communication & Movement

  • time measure by distance
  • defined by geography & distances
  • technological advance is to overcome barriers to movement of geography and distance

Forms of Human Movement

  • walking / running
    • Greece: marathona
    • Inca runners served to communicate across empire
  • water
    • currents
    • paddle/ oars
    • sail
  • animal propulsion
    • domestication of animals for transport
  • 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

Human-Powered Boats

  • easiest movement by boats designed to flow with the current
    • Babylonian inflatable boats made of animal skin/ guts
  • oars, paddles, etc.
    • review various forms
  • Polynesian canoes and catamarans

Sail

  • wind propulsion
  • Egypt

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 norht 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 revoluation
  • speed of correspondences measured by distance (letter-writing)
  • telegraph revolutionizes abiltity to send messagaes over distance instaneously
    • 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