Civilization and climate / by Ellsworth Huntington.

  • Ellsworth Huntington
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civilization and climate / by Ellsworth Huntington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    available for a moderately dense population and man can avoid diseases like tropical malaria, Human culture can rise to the highest levels. The location of the world’s great nations seems to them largely a matter of accident. The majority of people reject both of these extreme views. Few doubt that climate has an important relation to civilization, but the majority consider it less important than racial inherit¬ ance, proper food, or good institutions in the form of church, state, and home. We realize that a dense and progressive popula¬ tion does not live in the far North or in deserts simply because the difficulty of getting a living grinds men down and keeps them isolated. Wh know that the denizens of the torrid zone are slow and backward, and we almost universally agree that this is connected with the damp, steady heat. We continually give concrete expression to our faith in climate. Not only do we talk about the weather more than about any other one topic, but we visit the seashore or the mountains for a change of air. We go South in winter, and to cool places in summer. We are depressed by a series of cloudy days, and feel exuberant on a clear, brac¬ ing morning after a storm. Yet, in spite of this universal recog¬ nition of the importance of climate, we rarely assign to it a foremost place as a condition of civilization. We point out that great nations have developed in such widely diverse climates as the hot plains of Mesopotamia and Yucatan and the cool hill country of Norway and Switzerland. Moreover, although Illi¬ nois and southern Mongolia lie in the same latitude and have the same mean temperature, they differ enormously in civiliza¬ tion. To put the matter in another way, we recognize two great sets of facts which are apparently contradictory. We are con¬ scious of being stimulated or depressed by climatic conditions, and we know that as one goes northward or southward, the dis¬ tribution of civilization is generally in harmony with what we should expect on the basis of our own climatic experiences. Nevertheless, even in our own day, regions which lie in the same
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