4 ii 



NA TURE 



[September 23, 1922 



very curious fact, which, though it is familiar enough, 

 does not seem to have been considered in all its bearings. 

 This is that, despite the (relative) wealth of native 

 species of shrubs and trees, those which are cultivated 

 seem to have been for the most part introduced. This 

 is apparently true even of the supremely important 

 olive. The tree occurs in the fossil state, and the 

 olivaster of the maquis is believed by manv to be truly 

 wild, not feral. Yet it would appear almost certain 

 that the cultivated olive was introduced, into Europe 

 a1 least. The same thing is true of great numbers of 

 other -juries, and of all the fruit-bearing trees now 

 grown in the area there are few indeed which can lie 

 reasonably regarded as having originated there as 

 cultivated forms. Now, the deduction that I would 

 draw is that the Mediterranean area is one in which 

 lessons first learnt elsewhere could be easily practised, 

 but one rendered unsuited by the natural conditions 

 for the taking of the first steps. 



Man was doubtless first attracted to the area, as in 

 the case of the river-valleys, by the natural resources, 

 small though these must have been, even with the 

 addition of the sea fisheries. He became fixed to it 

 when he learnt that the hill spurs gave safe sites for 

 settlements, while affording easy access to the slopes 

 on which he could carry on his special form of intensive 

 cultivation. That form, as already suggested, was a 

 derived and not an original one. He replaced the 

 native trees and shrubs by useful cultivated varieties 

 or species, which had, certainly for the most part, 

 originated elsewhere. He intercalated short-lived 

 annuals like corn crops and beans along the line of 

 weakness indicated by the periodic opening and closing 

 of the natural vegetation. But one of his great diffi- 

 culties was always that the absence of much level land 

 and the climatic conditions rendered the growth of 

 such crops relatively difficult, much more difficult than 

 in the river- valleys. 



If we think of the early settlements as showing a 

 general resemblance to the Berber villages of the 

 Algerian Atlas to-day, we realise that they were more 

 or less isolated from one another, so that the social 

 polity was of a wholly different type from that existing 

 either in Babylonia or in early Egypt. But. and this 

 seems to me important, although the natural condi- 

 tions — especially the fact that fertility was limited to 

 certain areas — made a measure of isolation inevitable, 

 yet the sea gave a possibility of free movement in all 

 directions which was absent in the river- valleys. Thus 

 oversea, if not overland, spreading could take place, 

 and the changes in the geographical conditions as the 

 sea is traversed westward are relatively small, not 

 outside the limits of adaptation. Thus we have the 

 spread of the higher forms of Mediterranean culture 

 from the eastern end of the sea towards the west, with 

 the founding of new settlements of generallv similar 

 type to the old. This possibility of free movement 

 brought with it a wider range of adaptability, a con- 

 stant willingness to profit by new experiences, which 

 has proved of enormous value to the world at large. 



But with all its advantages the Mediterranean area, 

 as already stated, had the great disadvantage that 

 bread-stuffs were difficult to produce in quantity. 

 Two methods of getting over that difficulty could be 

 and were practised. Eor example, the ancient Greeks, 



NO. 2760, VOL. I IOJ 



having, it would appear, learnt the lesson from the 

 Phoenicians, dared, in course of time, to descend from 

 their hill-spurs to the sea-coast, in order to supplement 

 the scantv resources of their limited lands by sea- 

 trading. After a long interval the medieval cities, 

 especially of Italy, did the same thing on a greater 

 scale and with the advantage of a wider market. 

 Between the two periods Rome tried the other possible 

 method, that of holding in subjection the areas, outside 

 that of the characteristic climate, which were corn- 

 producing. Her failure was, at least in part, due to 

 geographical causes. The great advantage of the 

 method of sea-trading was the increase in the power of 

 adaptation which it brought, as a result of the con- 

 tinual peaceful contact with other lands and other 

 peoples. The decay of the splendid medieval cities 

 of Italy came when the Mediterranean ceased to be a 

 great highway of commerce, and the vivifying breezes 

 from the outside world which had swept through it 

 took another course — once again, therefore, a civilisa- 

 tion based upon a delicate adjustment to a particular 

 set of conditions fell when those conditions changed. 



Let us turn next to the third great area where, com- 

 paratively late, a complex civilisation grew up, that of 

 the forest belt of Central and Western Europe. Here 

 the conditions appear relatively so unfavourable that 

 man could scarcely have solved the problem of fixing 

 himself permanently to particular areas, and adapting 

 himself to them, were it not for the help of the experi- 

 ence gained elsewhere. The great agent in transmitting 

 that experience was, of course, first the Roman Empire, 

 and then the Church which was the direct heir of the 

 empire. 



The essential difficulty here was that the character- 

 istic plant formation was the closed temperate forest. 

 At first sight there appears to be within it no line of 

 weakness along which cultivated plants can be inter- 

 calated, and the establishment of cultivation seems to 

 depend upon the complete destruction of the natural 

 vegetation, involving the slow and peculiarly laborious 

 clearing of the forest. Had the temperate forest been 

 in point of fact as continuous as we are apt to assume, 

 the problem would have been so difficult that the 

 hunter's life in the forest might have lasted much 

 longer than it did. We know, of course, that there 

 were always " islands " in the sea of green, and of 

 these the most important, from the point of view of 

 the development of cultivation, were the loess areas 

 and the lower uplands, especially those over chalk. We 

 have, therefore, as our starting-point in this case 

 scattered settlements in the woods — not compact ones 

 like those of the Mediterranean region. As to the next 

 stage, the surrounding wood must be regarded from 

 two points of view. Initially it formed a protection, 

 the protective influence being strongest where the 

 ground was ill-drained, owing to the dense thickets 

 which covered the marshy ground. But, in contrast 

 to both the types of region already considered, given 

 the necessary tools for the clearing of the land, the 

 particular type of cultivation could lie extended almost 

 indefinitely on the level, while leaving the woods on 

 the rising ground to supply the necessary fuel, building 

 material, and pannage for the swine. This was a great 

 advantage, but it meant that the necessary protection 

 was soon lost. 



