From Greek 'gē' (earth) + 'graphia' (writing) — literally 'earth-drawing,' formalized by Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BCE.
The study of the physical features of the earth and its atmosphere, and of human activity as it relates to these; the physical features of a region.
From Latin "geōgraphia," from Greek "geōgraphía" (earth-description), a compound of "gê" (earth, land) + "gráphein" (to write, draw, describe). Greek "gê" derives from PIE *dʰǵʰem- (earth, ground), one of the foundational roots of the language family, also yielding Latin "humus" (earth, soil), "homō" (human, lit. "earthling"), and Sanskrit "kṣam-" (earth
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who is credited with founding geography as a discipline around 240 BCE, also calculated the circumference of the Earth using the angles of shadows at two different locations. His estimate was remarkably close to the actual value — within about 2% by some reconstructions — over two thousand years before satellites.