CHAPTER V CLIMATE AND THE EVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION ELLSWORTH HUNTINGTON RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN GEOGRAPHY IN YALE UNIVERSITY FACTORS IN HUMAN PROGRESS HUMAN progress depends upon three great factors. The first is inherent mental capacity, the second material resources, and the third energy. If any of these is lacking, civilization stagnates or even retrogrades. Where all are present civilization moves onward. How far do these three depend upon physical environment? How far does man's higher evolution agree with the evolution of plants and animals discussed in previous lectures? At first sight it appears as if there were a great gap between the evolution of man's body which this course of lectures has thus far considered, and of the mind which is the subject now before us. In one sense there is undoubtedly such a gap. Yet the more we study the matter, the more we see that from the lowest protozoan to the highest philosopher a marvelous unity pervades all nature. All progress in civilization, whether material or moral, arises from ideas in the minds of individuals. Therefore the first requisite of any advance is men with unusually gifted minds. Some races seem to be capable of producing such men in far greater numbers than do others. We rightly think of ancient Greece as preeminent in this respect. Galton, the founder of modern eugenics, has said that the average Athe nian in the age of Pericles was as much superior to the average Englishman of today as the Englishman is superior to the African. Although a few students still claim that all races possess equal possibilities if given equal opportunities, their conclusions lack statistical foundation. Judged by their achievements and by all the exact tests yet available, races differ as do individuals, although not to so great an extent. What causes these racial differences? We cannot answer until the biologists give us more light on the origin of the new forms called mutants. If it be asked, however, what preserves the mutants and thus gives rise to new racial qualities, we can answer with considerable certainty. Environment by means of natural selection allows some types to perpetuate themselves indefinitely, while it rigidly exterminates others. Among the various environmental factors, climate is apparently the most important. As Professor Lull has said in a previous lecture: "Changing environmental conditions stimulate the sluggish evolutionary stream to quickened movement. Whenever it has been possible to connect cause and effect, the immediate influence is found to be generally one of climate." Inherent mental capacity. The American Indians seem to furnish one of the best examples of the influence of climate upon mental capacities. Practically all authorities agree that the Indian is endowed with a relatively conservative type of mind. He has great powers of observation, of patience, of endurance, and also of action when some crisis suddenly stirs him. He is lacking, however, in originality, in the power of adaptation, and in the quick insight and inventiveness which make the Japanese so competent in seizing what they want in European civilization. It seems probable that the Indians owe much of their mental status to the fact that they appar 1 For a fuller discussion of this matter see "The Red Man's Continent," Yale University Press, 1918. ently migrated from Asia to America by way of Bering Strait. If that is the case, they must have spent many generations in the extremely trying environment of the Far North where the January temperature averages 10° F. below zero, and where the winter night lasts months. Such an environment is a terrible strain on the nerves. White men go crazy under it. To a man of quick, inventive mind who always wants to be up and doing, the enforced monotony of the long, icy night is torture. His mind preys upon itself and in time gives way. The type that survives is the phlegmatic man who can sit idly for weeks inside his stuffy hut, and not care whether anything happens or not. When they left the primitive home of man in Asia, the ancestors of the Indians presumably had minds like those of their neighbors who became the fathers of other When they emerged from their long sojourn in the Far North, however, they had lost some of their most valuable qualities. races. In the same way the European Nordics possess the type of mind to be expected of a race that has always lived in a stimulating climate. The Japanese show similar characteristics to an almost equal degree. It is significant that although these two races pushed out from central Asia in opposite directions, neither was ever forced far to the north or south, and each finds its present home in one of the world's best climates. Neither race, however, has evolved in a uniform climate, for changes due to the Glacial Period, especially in Europe, have forced them to endure repeated epochs of stress. The stress, however, was of a stimulating kind because it was apparently characterized by variability and not by the monotonous uniformity of the Far North or the equator. The African negroes, on the other hand, have by no means been so fortunate. Because their migrations led them into southerly regions they suffered a repressive evolution much like that of the Indians. In tropical regions the energetic types unfortunately kill themselves by overexertion. Activity accelerates the processes of metabolism and generates toxic poisons. In the right kind of climate these are eliminated during periods of rest. In a warm climate, however, the high temperature appears to cause excessive chemical activity of the protoplasm just as does exercise. Hence people feel tired even without exertion. When the effects of activity and of heat are combined the result is often fatal. The exact mechanism of the process has not yet been determined, but some such poisoning of the system and consequent elimination of unduly active types appears to be the reason why the negro has acquired a comparatively indolent character. Among the backward natives of Australia the elimination of energetic, nervously alert people has gone farther than among the negroes. The Australians in crossing the torrid zone were subjected to all the evils which have weakened the mental powers of the negroes. They also suffered a terrible handicap because their tropical experience was the precursor of an equally strenuous repression by the desert. There sudden and intense activity is at a premium when the water dries up and a long march must be made to a new supply. The most essential of all qualities, however, is the ability to endure hunger, thirst, and heat indefinitely, a kind of endurance which is much harder on people with alert nerves than upon those of stolid disposition. Moreover, mental alertness loses much of its importance as a factor in natural selection when the environment becomes so poor that there are almost no material resources. It is by no means strange, then, that the Australian bushmen, even more than their fellow sufferers, the Hottentots of South Africa, show, as it were, the combined weaknesses of the tropical negroes and of the desert people of Arabia. One might go on to discuss this theme in relation to all the races of the earth. Such a discussion would apparently strengthen the conclusion that while the mental inherit ance of an individual may show no apparent relation to his present environment, each individual is born with the indelible impress of the climatic environments through which his race has passed. Material resources. Material resources are no less important than innate capacity in their effect upon civilization. They are, if anything, still more closely connected with climate. A Socrates with no resources except the sands of Arabia to support himself and his ideas would never have been heard of. Mohammed had to live in an oasis and not in the sand. His religion would not today dominate nearly a seventh of mankind if it had not speedily spread to places with abundant material resources. The Eskimos show the importance of material resources still more clearly. Though possessing the same power of passive, nerveless endurance which is characteristic of the Indians, these people of the snow and ice seem to have a strain of inventive ability. Their stone lamps, their drills for lighting a fire by twirling one stick upon another, their clever boats which make a man and his canoe parts of a single watertight structure, all show the earmarks of ingenious minds. Nevertheless, civilization could not make progress among the Eskimos. Even if they were not afflicted with the inertia of the North, the absence of material resources would forbid a high civilization. Here, as in so many other cases, climate is the factor which mainly determines the resources. No crops will grow and even the reindeer cannot thrive in many parts of the Eskimo coasts, hence hunting is the only possible mode of life. Hunters must be nomadic. They cannot accumulate any large amount of the material resources which are needed as aids to progress. If the white man with his claims to superiority were placed in the home of the Eskimos with no outside resources, would it be more than a few generations before his mode of life and manner of thought would be much like theirs? The retrogression of the |