Influences of Geographic Environment Part 41

[734] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, p. 108.

New York, 1893.

[735] _Ibid._, pp. 104-106. W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 340-342, 352, 365. New York, 1899.

[736] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 135. London, 1903.

[737] _Ibid._, p. 133. W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 294-295. New York, 1899.

[738] Herodotus, II, 137, 140.

[739] Thucydides, I, 110. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt, Vol. II, p.

333. London, 1881.

[740] John Richard Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, chap.

III, p. 71.

[741] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 83, 101, 104, 107, 108. London, 1878.

[742] Tacitus, History of the Germans, Book VI, chap. VI. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, pp. 2-5, 13. New York, 1885.

[743] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 299. London, 1903.

[744] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 113-114.

London, 1878.

[745] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol.

I, pp. 327-328, 502-503. Oxford, 1892. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol.

II, p. 163. London, 1896-1898.

[746] U.S. Report of Commission of Navigation, p. 10. Was.h.i.+ngton, 1901.

CHAPTER XII

CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS

[Sidenote: Insularity of the land-ma.s.ses.]

The division of the earth's surface into 28 per cent. land and 72 per cent. water is an all important fact of physical geography and anthropo-geography. Owing to this proportion, the land-ma.s.ses, which alone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-fold larger surface of the uninhabitable ocean. Consequently, the human species, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeply ingrained insular character. Moreover, the water causes different degrees of separation between the land-ma.s.ses, according as it appears as inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; it determines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently the geographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kins.h.i.+p between the divisions of land. Finally, since the sea is for man only a highway to some ulterior sh.o.r.e, this geography of the land-ma.s.ses in relation to the encompa.s.sing waters points the routes and goals of human wanderings.

Each fragment of habitable land, large or small, continent or islet, means a corresponding group or detachment of the vast human family. Its size fixes the area at the service of the group which occupies it. Its location, however, may either endow it with a neighborliness like that subsisting between Africa and Europe and involving an interwoven history; or remoteness like that of South America from Australia, so complete that even the close net of intercourse thrown by modern commerce over the whole world has scarcely sufficed to bring them into touch. Therefore the highly irregular distribution of the land areas, here compactly grouped, there remote, deserves especial attention, since it produces far-reaching results. Finally, continents and islands, by their zonal situation, their land forms, rainfall, river systems, flora and fauna, produce for man varied life conditions, which in their turn are partially dependent upon the size and grouping of the land-ma.s.ses.

[Sidenote: Cla.s.sification of land-ma.s.ses according to size and location.]

A comparison of the large and small land-ma.s.ses of the from the standpoint of both physical and anthropological geography yields a cla.s.sification based upon size and location on the one hand, and historical influences on the other. The following table indicates the relation between the two.

I. Independent Land-ma.s.ses.

A. _Continents_. Independent by reason of size, which enables them to support a large number of people and afford the conditions for civilization.

(a) Insular continents, whose primitive and modern development are marked by remoteness. Australia.

(b) Neighboring continents, separated by narrow seas and showing community of historical events. Europe and Africa. Asia and North America around Bering Sea.

B. _Islands_. Independent by reason of location.

(a) Oceanic islands, characterized by greatest remoteness from continents and other islands, and also by independent or detached history. St. Helena and Iceland.

(b) Member of a group of oceanic islands, therefore less independent. Hawaii, Fayal in the Azores, Tongatabu.

(c) Large islands, approaching by reason of size the independence of continents and thereby finding compensation for a less independent location. New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar; in a cultural sense, Great Britain and j.a.pan.

II. Dependent Land-ma.s.ses.

(a) Insh.o.r.e or coast islands, whose history is intimately connected with that of the nearby mainland. Euboea, Long Island, Vancouver, Sakhalin, Ceylon.

(b) Neighboring islands, showing less intimate historical relations. Formosa, the Canaries, Ireland in contrast to Great Britain.

(c) Islands of enclosed or marginal seas, contained in a circle of lands and exposed to constant intercourse from all sides. Jamaica, Java, Crete, Sicily, Zealand, Gotland, St. Lawrence in Bering Sea.

(d) Island groups not to be considered apart from other groups.

Samoa, Fiji and Friendly Isles; Philippine, Sulu and Sunda Islands; Greater and Lesser Antilles.

[Sidenote: Effect of size of land-ma.s.ses.]

As the homes of man, these land-ma.s.ses vary greatly owing to difference of size. Only the six continents have been large enough to generate great bodies of people, to produce differentiated branches of the human family, and to maintain them in such numerical force that alien intermixtures were powerless essentially to modify the gradually developing ethnic type. The larger continents are marked by such diversity of climate, relief and contour, that they have afforded the varied environments and the area for the development of several great types or sub-types of mankind. Australia has been just large enough to produce one distinct native race, the result of a very ancient blend of Papuan and Malayan stocks. But prevailing aridity has cast a mantle of monotony over most of the continent, nullifying many local geographic differences in highland and lowland, curtailing the available area of its already restricted surface, and hence checking the differentiation that results either from the compet.i.tion of large numbers or from a varied environment. We find Australia characterized above all other continents by monotony of culture, mode of life, customs, languages, and a uniform race type from the Murray River to York peninsula.[747] The twin continents of the Americas developed a race singularly uniform in its physical traits,[748] if we leave out of account the markedly divergent Eskimos, but displaying a wide range of political, social and economic developments, from the small, unorganized groups of wandering savages, like the desert Shoshones and coast Fuegians, to the large, stable empire of the Incas, with intensive agriculture, public works, a state religion and an enlightened government.

Even the largest islands of the world, such as Borneo, New Guinea and Madagascar, show no such independent ethnic development. This is the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of the largest land-ma.s.ses. Europe, except on the basis of its size and peninsula form, has no t.i.tle to the name of continent; certainly not on anthropo-geographical grounds. Its cla.s.sification as a continent arose in the Mediterranean among the Greeks, as a geographical expression of the antagonism between themselves and their Carian, Phoenician and Persian enemies across the Aegean; the idea had therefore a political origin, and was formed without knowledge of that vast stretch of plains between the Black Sea and the Arctic Ocean, where Asia's climate and races lap over into Europe, and where to-day we find the Muscovite Empire, in point of geographic conditions, its underlying ethnic stock and form of government, as much Asiatic as European. The real or western Europe, which the Roman Empire gradually added to the narrow Europe of the Greeks, and which is strikingly contrasted to Asia in point of size, relief, contour, climate and races, only served to maintain the distinction between the two continents in men's minds. But from a geographical standpoint the distinction is an error. It has confused the interpretation of the history of the Greeks and the development of the Russians. It has brought disorder into the question of the European or Asiatic origin of the Aryan linguistic family, which the anthropo-geographer would a.s.sign to the single continent of Eurasia. The independent development that falls to the lot of great world islands like the Americas and Australia is impossible in a peninsular continent like Europe, large as it is.

[Sidenote: Independence of location versus independence of size.]

The independence of a land-ma.s.s is based not alone on size: there is also an independence of location. This, owing to the spherical form of the earth, tends to be neutralized by the independence based upon large area. The larger a land-ma.s.s is, the nearer it approaches to others.

Eurasia, the largest of all the continents, comes into close proximity and therefore close relations with Africa, North America, and even Australia; whereas Australia is at once the smallest and the most isolated of the continents. The remote oceanic islands of the Atlantic Ocean, measuring only a few square miles in area, have a location so independent of other inhabited lands, that before the period of the great discoveries they had never appeared on the horizon of man.

[Sidenote: The case of Asia.]

Asia's size and central location to the other continents were formerly taken as an argument for its correspondingly significant position in the creation and history of man. Its central location is reflected in the hypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-European linguistic group of peoples; and though the theory has been justly called into question, these peoples have undoubtedly been subjected to Asiatic influences.

The same thing is true of the native American race, both as to Asiatic origin and influences; because the approximation of Siberia to Alaska is too close to exclude human relations between the two continents. The Malays, too, were probably sprung from the soil of southeastern Asia and spread thence over their close-packed Archipelago. Even the native Australians betray a Malayan and therefore Asiatic element in their composition,[749] while the same element can be traced yet more distinctly in the widely scattered Polynesians and the Hovas of Madagascar. This radiation of races seems to reflect Asia's location at the core of the land-ma.s.ses. Yet the capacity to form such centers of ethnic distribution is not necessarily limited to the largest continents; history teaches us that small areas which have early achieved a relatively dense population are p.r.o.ne to scatter far their seeds of nations.

[Sidenote: Location of hemispheres and ethnic kins.h.i.+p.]

The continents harbor the most widely different races where they are farthest apart; where they converge most nearly, they show the closest ethnic kins.h.i.+ps. The same principle becomes apparent in their plants and animals. The distribution of the land-ma.s.ses over the earth is conspicuous for their convergence in the north and divergence in long peninsular forms toward the south. The contrasted grouping is reflected in both, the lower animals and the peoples inhabiting these respectively vicinal and remote lands. Only where North America and Eurasia stretch out arms to one another around the polar sea do Eastern and Western Hemisphere show a community of mammalian forms. These are all strictly Arctic animals, such as the reindeer, elk, Arctic fox, glutton and ermine.[750] This is the Boreal sub-region of the Holoarctic zoological realm, characterized by a very h.o.m.ogeneous and very limited fauna.[751] In contrast, the portion of the hemispheres lying south of the Tropic of Cancer is divided into four distinct zoological realms, corresponding to Central and South America, Africa south of Sahara, the two Indian peninsulas with the adjacent islands, and Australia.[752] But when we consider the continental extremities projecting beyond the Tropic of Capricorn, where geographic divergence reaches a climax, we find their faunas and floras utterly dissimilar, despite the fact that climate and physical conditions are very similar.[753] We find also widely divergent races in the southern sections of Africa, Australia or Tasmania and South America, while Arctic Eurasia and America come as near meeting ethnically as they do geographically. Here and here only both Eastern and Western Hemisphere show a strong affinity of race. The Eskimo, long cla.s.sed as Mongoloid, are now regarded as an aberrant variety of the American race, owing to their narrow headform and linguistic affinity; though in Alaska even their headform closely approximates the Mongoloid Siberian type.[754] But in stature, color, oblique eyes, broad flat face, and high cheek bones, in his temperament and character, artistic productions and some aspects of his culture, he groups with the Asiatic Hyperboreans across the narrow sixty miles of water forming Bering Strait.[755] In the northern part of the earth's land area, the distribution of floras, faunas, and races shows interdependence, intercourse; in the southern, separation, isolation.

[Sidenote: Continental convergence and ethnic kins.h.i.+p.]

What is true where the hemispheres come together is true also where continents converge. The core of the Old World is found in the Mediterranean basin where Europe, Asia and Africa form a close circle of lands and where they are inhabited by the one white Mediterranean race.