holmes] ABORIGIISrAL AMERICAN ANTIQUITIES PART I 47 



possible utilization of all the vast resources of nature. The relations 

 of land and sea, of fertile and desert areas, and of valleys and 

 mountain ranges may also have great influence, and climate may 

 decide the cultural fate of peoples, confining them to the limited 

 activities of the Arctic, stimulating them to activity in the Temperate 

 Zone, and encouraging indolence in torrid climes. 



The vast influence of environment as an agency in determining the 



culture of primitive peoples becomes more and more 

 PuIwoTumire ^ apparent with the advance of research. This is well 



illustrated, for example, by the highly specialized 

 culture of the Pueblo tribes of the southwestern United States. 

 It is here made manifest that it is not so much the capabili- 

 ties and culture heritage of the particular stock of people that 

 determines the form of material culture as it is their local en- 

 vironment. Any primitive people finding its way into this land of 

 cliifs, rock shelters, and ready-quarried building stone would soon be 

 led under favorable stimulus to employ stone in building. The prox- 

 imity of predatory peoples would bring about the building of strong 

 pueblos in the lowlands and defensive resorts in the cliffs. The 

 limitations of natural food resources would lead to the cultivation 

 of the fertile spots in the isolated desert-bordered valleys. The arid 

 conditions would make irrigation necessary and other special fea- 

 tures of culture W'Ould perforce arise locally. The needs of trans- 

 porting the produce of the fields and of the storage of water would 

 lead to skill in basketry and pottery, and scarcity of large game 

 jdelding skins for clothing would make weaving necessary. Ac- 

 commodating itself to the peculiar conditions, the social organization 

 would take on localized forms. The mythology and forms of wor- 

 ship which often come up from the remote past with little change 

 w^ould yield to local influences and even the origin myths would 

 derive the tribes from local sources. The modifying influences of 

 environment are well shown by the fact that the three or four stocks 

 which arrived in the arid region from different sources have had 

 their cultures almost completely remodeled and unified by the ex- 

 ceptional local environment. 

 The culture of the mound-building tribes of the middle eastern 



United States was not widely different in degree of 

 Environment i n advancement from that of the Pueblos, yet it was in 

 cuuure most respccts distinct in type. There were marked 



differences in agriculture, the building arts, sculp- 

 ture, pottery, weaving, metallurg}-, in implements and utensils, and 

 in the arts of embellishment, as well as in social and religious 

 customs — differences doubtless largely due to the impress of local 

 conditions rather than to any extraneous or distant ancestral 

 38657°— 19— Bull. 60, pt 1 5 



