THE GEOGRAPHIC ASPECT OF CULTURE 161 



America, and the steppes of Kussia, the scarcity of subsistence necessi- 

 tates a nomadic life. In this patriarchial form of existence the size of 

 the community is limited by the productiveness of the soil, as illustrated 

 in Genesis 13 : 5-11. Fixed relationships are therefore unknown, and 

 hence the political and social order called the state is impossible. 



Each of the great river valleys of antiquity developed an independ- 

 ent civilization, Egypt first by reason of its tropical location, closely 

 followed by China and the Tigro-Euphrates basin, lying five degrees 

 farther north. The beginnings of Chinese culture were equally prom- 

 ising with those of the other great nations of antiquity. The art of 

 writing was probably originated by the Chinese, while the elements of 

 mathematics and astronomy, the art of printing and various manufac- 

 tures, were known to them centuries before they reached Europe. The 

 geographical isolation of China, however, put an effectual barrier to 

 progress, resulting in a sort of inversion of character, whereby reverence 

 for precedent took the place of progressive development. As an in- 

 stance of this inversion, it is related of one of the Chinese emperors 

 that when he wished to confer honors upon his prime minister he con- 

 ferred them upon the minister's father. Chinese culture has petrified 

 almost at the outset, and is therefore of no significance except as a case 

 of arrested development, due largely if not wholly to geographic 

 limitations. 



In contrast to China, the civilizations originating in the valleys of 

 the Nile and Euphrates found a natural outlet eastward and northward 

 by way of the Mediterranean. Here culture in all its phases reflected 

 the influence of the soil. Religion took the form of a gross nature 

 worship, the divinities being the great rivers, the sun and moon, and 

 other natural sources from which their physical wants were supplied, 

 while arts and manufactures were also limited to the practical and 

 prosaic. In Egypt the peculiar physical conditions presented by the 

 annual overflow of the Nile led to the invention of surveying, and of 

 necessity to the elements of arithmetic and geometry required to apply 

 it. In architecture also the effort to orient their temples gave rise to 

 certain fundamental geometric theorems, still in use, such as the prop- 

 erties of right-angled triangles, while in art the enlargement of small 

 drawings or paintings for their temple walls was accomplished by 

 means of a network of squares closely related to the modern Cartesian 

 system of coordinates. The entire absence of rainfall and consequent 

 clearness of atmosphere also had an important effect in directing the 

 attention of the Egyptians to the heavens, which, supplemented by the 

 oriental use of the roof as a terrace, led to the study of astronomy. 



In Chaldea the similarity of race and physical conditions to those 

 in Egypt led to identical results, the earliest fragments of Chaldean 

 literature disclosing a considerable knowledge of mathematics, astron- 



