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"God created war so that Americans would learn geography." – Mark Twain
It is true, isn't it? Two years ago, how many of you had heard of Kherson or Melitopol? Back then I thought It was Nikoliav, not Mykolaiv. Before October 7, who knew where Wadi as-Salqua was?
Don't be too chagrined. I learned where Khe Sanh, Hue, and Pleiku were courtesy of the Vietnam War. My parents picked up all sorts of geography lessons during World War II. Few Americans knew where Guadalcanal, Kwajalein, and Saipan were. And my grandparents had only a shadowy idea of where the Argonne was prior to World War I.
I am a geography nut. Many years ago, I worked Mission Control as a Shuttle navigator. We had a ground track map up (a paper one, back then). During night shifts at the Nav Console we would amuse ourselves (and keep ourselves awake) by calling out an obscure spot on the map and having the other person find it. I learned where the Kerguelen Islands, the Spratleys, the Andamans, and other weird and wonderful places were. Still, even I tend to pick up new geographic knowledge via current wars.
Perhaps geographic ignorance is an indicator of peace. I suspect a lot of us will be learning more geography in the next few years, though.
Discussion (26)
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Have you played Geoguesser? It is great fun. You are dropped at a location in street view and you need to figure out where you are.
geoguessr.com
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I will have to try it.
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I binged it for a while a little over ten years ago. That's how I learned that Russia, like the U.S. but unlike most of the rest of Europe, makes a lot of use of billboards for advertising. Reading the road signs helps, too. If I don't land in a country that uses a latin or cyrillic alphabet, I'm in trouble.
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Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Greek are unique indicators. The hardest places are in Latin America because it's almost all Spanish.
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Several months ago I was reading David Anthony's 2010 book, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Before the Russia-Ukraine war I would have had a lot more trouble following it without a lot more frequent reference to maps than I needed this time.
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