Geomorphological diversity influence on population settlement

Since the beginning of humanity, geomorphological diversity and relief features some territories, have influenced human settlement and population density. Certainly, the more comfortable conditions of the relief caused the increasing population of the some territory. Thus, there was more intensive settlement on fluvial or marine forms of relief, while on karst, aeolian relief, landslides and areas of escarpment, human settlement was less or completely absent. The only exception is the times of wars, occupations or other disasters, when people settled in unfavorable relief areas (karst, deserts, etc.). The following elements of the relief influenced the construction of residential buildings as well as the industrial activity: the slope of the hillside, surface sunshine, surface geodynamics, water supply, horizontal and vertical terrain distribution, hypsometric features, relief energy. In the paper, the evaluation of individual elements will be presented on examples from the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro.