Before entering fully into the meaning of the term human geography, we are going to proceed to discover the etymological origin of the two words that give it shape:
-Geography, first of all, comes from Greek. Exactly it is the result of the sum of several components of said language: the noun "gen", which means "earth"; the word "grapho", which is synonymous with "record" or "write", and the suffix "-ia", which is used to indicate relationship.
-Human, secondly, is a word that has its etymological origin in Latin. Specifically, it emanates from the sum of "humus", which can be translated as "earth", and the suffix "-ana", which is used to indicate belonging.
Geography is the science dedicated to describing the planet Earth . Human , meanwhile, is that linked to man as a species .
The idea of human geography , in this framework, refers to a branch of geography focused on the study of human communities from a perspective linked to space . In this way, it analyzes how people are linked to the physical environment in which they reside.
Each society develops its environment by transforming the surface and its social structures according to its interests and needs. Political, economic and cultural processes, for example, influence these modifications. Human geography is specifically dedicated to studying geographic systems that arise from the relationship between individuals and the physical space they inhabit.
It is often said that human geography is responsible for describing human landscapes in a scientific way. For this, it carries out an analysis of the population distribution on the surface of the planet , which is uneven and has all kinds of effects (economic, demographic, etc.). It cannot be ignored that the physical environment offers specific resources and that the distribution of human beings in the environment is related to the possibility of accessing said resources.
It should be noted that human geography intersects with other geographical branches, such as economic geography , political geography and cultural geography , among many others. All of them, together, allow us to understand the interactions between human beings and their physical environment, which influences economic activity, urbanization and political organization, in addition to other issues.
Furthermore, given all of the above, we cannot ignore the existence of a literary work that has the term in question in its title and that is written by one of the most important Spanish authors of recent decades. We are referring to the novel "Atlas of Human Geography", which is written by the Madrid writer Almudena Grandes.
In 1998, this book was published, which revolves around four women (Rosa, Fran, Marisa and Ana) who work together in a publishing house, specifically carrying out the preparation of a world atlas. Women who are very different from each other and who have different personal experiences, which will become known to the reader progressively.