History of a motherland can give you a sense of pride as well as an understanding of where your family came from. As for geography; before we learned how to really shape our environments people were pretty much ruled by the area they lived in. Such as if it was a good place for farming or near the sea where you would fish for a living. It shapes the type of civilization you have and how you use natural resources if there are any. A land with none will have a harder time competing with those that do. Think of the civil war, the north had most of the factories used to create weapons while the south had a larger plantation ratio though thats not really geography its the same concept. And the sources of studing history are way too numerous to mention. Mostly artifacts and historical documentation as well as oral tradition.
