Great Geographers of the Ancient World

This talk presents three great foundational geographers of the ancient world who already knew the earth was round, had already estimated its size with remarkable accuracy, and introduced the concepts of longitude and latitude long before the New World was even known.

Eratosthenes (c. 276 - 194 BCE), librarian of the great Library of Alexandria, calculated the Earth’s circumference using geometry. Strabo (c. 64 BCE - 24 CE) followed and expanded the great cartographic traditions through his extensive writings. Claudius Ptolemaeus (c. 100 - 170 CE) spread the knowledge of the Greeks to the Roman Empire, shaping geographic thought for centuries to come.

Richard Lobban, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology and African studies at Rhode Island College, serves as adjunct professor of African studies at the Naval War College. He has a master’s degree from Temple University and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has taught at the American University in Cairo, Tufts University and Dartmouth College, among others. He has conducted field research in Tunis and Egypt and has been excavating a temple in Sudan for ten years. Richard is widely published in urban and complex societies, informal sector economy, gender, ethnicity, race and class, especially in the Middle East. He often serves as a subject matter expert and court-appointed expert witness in political asylum cases for refugees from Africa and the Middle East.