336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ENVIRONMENT IN RELATION TO SEX IN 

 HUMAN CULTURE. 



By OTIS T. MASON, 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



rr^HERE is a sense in which human environments may be viewed in 

 -'- their relation to sex. 



The greater part of the earth's surface was sterile to all primitive 

 peoples, anterior to the times when the harnessing of physical forces, 

 little by little, brought all lands and all waters under human dominion. 

 The seas, the mountains, the frozen regions and the deserts were never 

 traversed by savage man. In other areas the soil was so rich that dense 

 forests and impenetrable pampas, with their dreadful solitudes and 

 venomous animals and plants, served as a prohibitory wall against 

 human occupation until the good offices of fire subdued them. 



The remaining areas, of which we are now speaking, may be divided 

 into the bisexual, the feminal and the virile. These natural homes of 

 humanity have been characterized as culture areas, areas of character- 

 ization, ethnic provinces, oikoumenoi, and so on, either by reason of 

 their having produced marked varieties of the genus homo, or because 

 special forms of activities have been demanded and fostered in them. 

 Each of them has been studied respecting its salubrity, its food supply, 

 its materials for elevating industries, its distance from the highways 

 of progress, its scenery and resources of every kind affecting the welfare 

 of our species; but here it is designed to interrogate them regarding 

 their treatment of men and women. 



The term 'progress' means the perfecting of mental attributes and 

 bodily skill of the individual and enlarging the number of persons 

 cooperating in the same activity over longer time and greater space 

 simultaneously. 



The exigencies of maternity always differentiated the activities, the 

 artistic creations, the language, the social life, the knowledge and the re- 

 ligious conceptions of women. Over and above all actions in common 

 with men, they were spinners, dyers, weavers, nest-builders and purvey- 

 ors. For them the fireside was literally the focus of innumerable cares. 



In any mode of primitive life, on the other hand, men went to war 

 with the elements and with things. In their hands was the apparatus 

 of capture, of incarceration, of slaughter. They exploited the bound- 

 aries of the unknown in every direction. 



