Sharia law is the strict Islamic law that imposes often cruel punishments to lawbreakers.

Eratosthenes was an Ancient Greek mathematician and geographer who is notable for determining the circumference of the Earth using geometry. By measuring the sun’s angles from two separate places at the same time, on the same day, he was able to determine that the circumference of the Earth was around 46,000 km. Modern conclusions show that he was only off by a few hundred kilometers, a remarkable achievement for the third century BCE.

The five themes to geography are: location, region, movement, place, and human-environment interaction. Time is important because all of these things change over time, but it is not considered a foundational theme of geography as a discipline.

A model is a simplified abstraction of reality, structured to clarify causal relationships. Globes and maps are both types of models.

The geographer William Morris Davis is often credited with being the “father of American geography.” He wrote his seminal piece on the cycle of erosion which focused on the effects of rivers on the surrounding landscape. Carl Ritter was German and was referred to as one of the "founders of modern geography." Carl Sauer was an American geographer and his work represents his emphasis on cultural geography. Ernest W. Burgess was a Canadian sociologist and is credited with the formation of the method of unit-weightless regression that could be used to predict the success/failure of inmates on parole. Arno Peters was a German historian.