i 5 4 EVOLUTION OF THE EARTH 



nomadic hunters and to remain in the lowest stage of civiliza- 

 tion. 



Turn now to the Pueblo region. A rainfall of six or eight 

 inches in the three summer months seems insignificant. Yet 

 it made all the difference between savagery and barbarism. 

 Its absence caused the Utes and the California Indians to be 

 as much below the Hopis and the other Pueblo tribes as the 

 Pueblos are below modern Europeans. The one great cereal 

 of the New World is Indian corn. The two other staple 

 crops capable of being raised in the dry regions of pre- 

 Columbian America were beans and pumpkins. All of these 

 can grow where there is moisture in summer, but not otherwise. 

 To raise them by irrigation in places like Utah and California 

 is practically impossible for primitive people. On all except 

 the larger streams, whose control is beyond the power of 

 beginners, the floods come to an end long before the time when 

 the crops most need them. Where the Pueblos live, however, 

 the summer rains produce floods just when the corn, beans, 

 and pumpkins are most eager for water. Hence these crops 

 provided the early Americans with the basis for a well- 

 developed system of agriculture, and progress was assured. 

 Even if the Utes and the Indians of California had been more 

 inventive than the Pueblo Indians and had produced men with 

 minds of unusual brilliancy, the lack of material resources 

 adapted to the early stages of development would probably 

 have kept them permanently in savagery. 



The material resources thus far mentioned depend upon 

 climate. In this they are like nine-tenths of the world's re- 

 sources. All kinds of food, all kinds of clothing, and a large 

 part of the materials used for shelter depend absolutely upon 

 climate. Perhaps there is some exception to this statement, 

 but I have searched for it in vain. The fish of the sea, the 

 fowl of the air, and the beasts of the field, even though they 

 may prey upon other animals, are in the last analysis wholly 



