Ratzel's geography has been the subject of deterministic and evolutionist interpretations for quite some time. One of the explanations that favoured this type of reading, was the work of his disciple Ellen Churchill Semple, who ended up giving a personal and rather distorted version of the teaching. It is interesting to point out how the founders of the American Historical Tradition (conventionally know as Diffusionism), towards the end of the nineteenth century, whowere caracterized and self identified mostly by their radical critique of determinism and evolutionist interpretations, found their point of reference for the new way of interpreting the so called parallel cultural developments precisely in Ratzel's work.
