Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I. GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES WHICH AFFECT THE LIFE OF SOCIETY CHAPTER III GEOGRAPHIC CAUSES AND THEIR SOCIAL EFFECTS The Less Conspicuous Geographic Differences Socially Important.—We are all familiar in a superficial way with the obvious fact that the activities of a people are largely determined by their geographic environment. Life cannot be the same in arctic regions as in the tropics, nor upon deserts of drifting sand as upon the grassy steppes which afford the natural home for wandering shepherds and their herds, nor upon the seacoast with its fisheries and commerce as among the mountains with their forests and mines. But it is not alone the extreme and unusual manifestations of nature whieh affect the life of man. On the contrary the very absence of extremes has helped to make Europe the seat of the richest civilization. So relatively inconspicuous a fact as the absence of a creature adapted to be domesticated and milked might cause one incipient social type to be crushed out in the struggle for existence, or the presence of a creature adapted to become a beast of burden might enable one people to grow into a triumphant race, contributors to a dominant civilization, and the absence of such a creature might condemn another race to backwardness and final extinction. The following effects of geographic conditions deserve particular mention: 1. Geographic Conditions Determine the Size of Populations.—Thronging cities are found at points of geographic advantage. And in the original development of civilization populations first assembled in considerable density where nature was especially lavish of food. Thus the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Ganges, and Piho became cradles of civilization. The familiar differences between city and country life illustrate the importance of dif...