Cultural landscape
Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"
Meaning
A cultural landscape is land that has been shaped by human work. Nature provides the stage, and people add fields, orchards, pastures, towns, ports, roads and hill resorts. As technology improves, nature gets "humanised" and carries the imprint of human effort. NCERT links this idea to possibilism, the view that nature offers chances and people choose how to use them. Carl Sauer's "The Morphology of Landscape" (1925) made the cultural landscape a central idea in American geography.
Example
The Indira Gandhi Canal brings water into the Thar desert of western Rajasthan. Sand dunes have turned into wheat and mustard fields, with villages and roads along the canal. This is a new cultural landscape made by people.
Don't confuse with
- Natural landscape: it is land shaped only by nature, such as rivers, wind and rocks, without human change. A cultural landscape carries a human imprint.