4 1 6 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 1922 



Human Geography: First Principles and some Applications. 1 



By Marion I. Newbigin, D.Sc. 



IT is a curious fact that, although geographers are 

 agreed that man's intelligence and power of 

 acquiring and transmitting knowledge so differentiate 

 him from animals that it is necessary to distinguish 

 between human geography and animal geography, 

 yet, so far as I am aware, little detailed consideration 

 has been given to the question as to the respects in 

 which his response to environmental conditions differs 

 from that of the animals. This is unfortunate, more 

 especially since, thanks to the biologists, we have a 

 fairly clear idea as to the mechanism of the response 

 in the latter case. 



If, for example, we take two familiar animals, such 

 as the rabbit and the common hare, we find that, 

 though belonging to the same genus, and generally 

 resembling each other in structure, they show certain 

 minor differences in bodily form and habits fitting 

 them for their respective environments. The bio- 

 logists are broadly agreed that these differences are an 

 adaptive response to the different environments of the 

 two animals. In explaining the origin of that adaptive 

 response, most of them lay stress on the two factors of 

 fixation to a particular environment and isolation — 

 actual or physiological — within it, so that incipient 

 variations are not swamped by intercrossing. Now 

 when we turn to man, two facts are at once apparent. 

 First, at the present time, he does not appear to respond 

 to environmental influences by adaptive modifications 

 of bodily form. Secondly, there was certainly a time, 

 before he had come fully to his heritage, when he did 

 so respond. We know this because the anthropologists 

 are agreed that while man once ran into a number of 

 species — and of genera — now all living human beings 

 belong to the same species, and even the races show 

 marked signs of being in process of becoming swamped 

 by intercrossing. In other words, there was a time 

 when there was no human geography, when man reacted 

 to the sum total of the conditions as an animal does ; 

 but that time appears largely to have passed. 



But there is certainly still a human response to en- 

 vironmental conditions. What precise form does it 

 take ? To a certain minor extent, apparently as an 

 inheritance from what I regard as essentially the pre- 

 human period, there is a direct structural response. 

 But man's real response to the surface phenomena of 

 the earth takes the form of a communal, not an indi- 

 vidual response. It is the aptitudes which the members 

 of a community display, the tools which they use, the 

 kind of knowledge which they accumulate, their modes 

 of organisation, their type of material wealth, their 

 traditions and ideals, which show the environmental 

 imprint most closely — far more closely than the colour 

 of their skins or the shape of their heads. 



But when and how did the change in the two modes 

 of response come about ? To answer this question let 

 us recall what has been already said as to the import- 

 ant e of fixation and isolation in the case of animals. 

 The surface of the earth is almost infinitely diverse, and 

 what the biologists call natural barriers, the major 



1 From the Presidential Address delivered to Section E (Geography) of 

 the British Association at Hull on Sept. 7. 



NO. 2760, VOL. 1 lo] 



barriers like deserts, seas, and mountain chains, or the 

 minor ones produced by the transition from one type 

 of plant formation to another — e.g. from the forested 

 river valley to the grass-covered upland — separate 

 different types of environment, and form obstacles to 

 the distribution of most land animals. There must 

 have been a time when groups of men, no less than the 

 pigs in the forest or the asses on the steppe, were firmly 

 gripped by the physical conditions, were isolated from 

 other groups, and forced to become fitted by structure 

 and habit for a particular set of conditions, or to die 

 out. But with his growing intelligence man escaped 

 from this iron grip, learnt to make virtually every part 

 of the surface yield enough for survival, and proved 

 capable of overcoming every kind of natural barrier. 

 When this occurred the old mechanism of adaptation 

 largely — though not completely — ceased to work. 

 Evolution then might have ceased also, man might 

 have become specially fitted to no environment because 

 fitted for all, if the factors of fixation and isolation had 

 not, in quite a different fashion, obtained a new hold. 



Man ceased, save in relatively few parts of the earth's 

 surface, to be a continuous wanderer. He settled down 

 afresh on particular parts of it, and there learnt to use 

 his increasingly complex brain not only in utilising to 

 their full the natural resources, but also in modifying 

 the local conditions so that new resources became 

 available. In other words, I wish to suggest that the 

 cultivation of the soil was the great agent in ensuring 

 the new type of fixation to a particular area which 

 once again made evolution possible. But evolution 

 now took the form of increasing development of com- 

 munal life, or, in other words, the growth of what we 

 call civilisation is the precise equivalent of specific 

 differences in plant or animal. 



Further, just as, in the case of the animal, isolation 

 is necessary before an incipient species can become 

 fixed, so in the case of human communities a measure 

 of protection from the inhabitants of neighbouring 

 areas — a measure, that is, of isolation — is essential 

 before civilisation can develop. 



Again, in the case alike of plants and animals we 

 know that where the local conditions are such that the 

 incipient species is limited to a very narrow area, highly 

 specialised forms of adaptation may occur, as they do, 

 for example, on many islands, or in isolated mountain 

 chains ; but that specialised type of development is 

 associated with the loss of the capacity to vary, to 

 acquire adaptations fitting the organism for a wider 

 area. So in the case of human communities, where the 

 isolation is too complete the power of adaptation tends 

 to be lost, and such groups, though their civilisation 

 may, along its own lines, be of a highly specialised type, 

 are easily overwhelmed when contact with the outside 

 world does occur, just as island animals tend to dis- 

 appear before introduced forms. 



With these general statements as starting-point, let 

 us consider some facts in regard to the development of 

 civilisation in Europe and the margins of the adjacent 

 continents. 



In this area history has seen three successive great 



