SUCCESSIVE STAGES OF CULTURE IN NORTHERN NEW MEXICO. 



89 



on a much less extensive scale. They, too, in the early part of the seventeenth century 

 seem to have been able to spread out into regions not now habitable, and they, too, suffered 

 stress and were forced to give up their old homes. 



The history thus outhned is highly fragmentary. It is introduced here merely to call 

 attention to the way in which studies like those of this volume may enable us to round out 

 the outlines of early American history and assign dates to certain epochs. If the change 

 of climate from the past to the present has been pulsatory, it needs no demonstration to 

 show that in a dry country like the Southwest an epoch of abundant and, stUl more, of 

 increasing rainfall would be marked by prosperity and by an increase in the density of 

 population. Wars would be relatively scarce, or if they occurred they would be wars of 

 conquest and expansion rather than pitiless raids like those of the hungry Arabs and the 

 hordes of Genghis I^an. Such at least is the theory to which a study of the climatic 

 vicissitudes of Asia seems to lead. "When a change for the worse arose, and the country 

 began to become drier, all sorts of distress would ultimately ensue. That drought brings 

 famine, and that fanxine brings disease and pestilence, need no demonstration. That 

 famine and hardship lead to robbery, raids, plunder, and kindred ills is also self-evident. 

 That these things disrupt society and lead to war, misery, and the overthrow of civilizations 

 is also clear. Doubtless other forces often conceal and often reverse the results which 

 climate alone would produce, but even in the most advanced of modern countries few 

 influences are more powerful than those of poor crops, poverty, and hunger. For example, 

 Bruckner* has shown that the volume of emigration from northwestern Europe to the 

 United States has varied in close harmony with variations in rainfall and hence in the 

 crops. Moist periods in Europe are in general coincident with moist periods in America, 

 but in northwestern Europe an excess of moisture is injurious to most farm products, while 

 in America it is favorable. Hence poverty at home has served as an expulsive force, while 

 prosperity in America has been an attractive force, and the two together have caused a 

 pronounced agreement between rainfall and emigration, as is illustrated in figure 7. To 



1833 1843 1853 1863 1873 1883 1893 1903 

 Fig. 7. — Rainfall and Emigration in Europe, after Briickner. 



take another example, it is generally agreed that the United States had a Populist party 

 largely because of a series of bad crops, and that the party died on the return of prosperity. 

 If small variations of rainfall can produce such great results, a far mofe serious and pro- 

 longed succession of worse and worse years might well disrupt so primitive a civihzation 

 as that of the pre-Columbian Americans. If this is so, and if we shall ultimately find that 

 chmatic pulsations have actually taken place, we shall be able to say that in such and 

 such centuries the conditions of climate were such that prosperity was the rule, and that 

 agriculture was possible to such and such limits. In certain succeeding centuries, when 

 conditions became worse, the inhabitants must have been forced to find a living within 

 an area much smaller than heretofore, old habits must have been interfered with, war 

 and strife must have prevailed, numbers of people must have been forced to move from 



* Ed. Bruckner: Klimaschwan kungen und Volker wanderungen in xix Jahrhundert Internationaler Wochenschrift. 

 Marz 5,.1910. 



