E— GEOGRAPHY 107 



here to note the fate of societies that have hngered at this stage of hunting 

 and collecting. 



If we use as a hypothesis the idea of drifts from northern Africa and 

 south-western Asia, we have a key to some modern distributions of hunting 

 peoples. These societies are either in what are ultimate corners or in areas 

 of special difficulty ; elsewhere they have been superseded by agricul- 

 turists. The pygmies of the equatorial forest of Africa are remnants in 

 a region of hot wet climate where debilitation makes achievement difficult, 

 and one may discuss in what measure these lowly people are primitive 

 and in what measure they are degenerate. Biologists find the same type 

 of question arises concerning the lowliest members of various animal 

 groups. The Bushmen of south-western Africa are in a region of sheer 

 poverty in a far corner. The Veddah and some jungle tribes of southern 

 India are in another far corner under conditions that forest or jungle 

 makes difficult. The Australians and recently extinct Tasmanians are 

 in a far corner, isolated by orographical changes. The pygmies and some 

 other hunting groups of the Malay and the East Indies and Philippines 

 are, again, in what are almost ultimate corners, isolated by land-sinking, 

 and , also, in regions of warm wet forest. North-eastern Asia also has some 

 hunting groups, but here it is possible that some of the peoples, as Demo- 

 lins thought, may have given up pastoralism as they drifted north-eastward 

 from the interior of Asia. The pre-Columbian hunting peoples of the 

 New World are omitted from this sketch, as they would need separate 

 discussion, for the story of spreads of culture into America is a complex 

 one, as the hunting peoples of pre-Columbian America have a more 

 intricate cultural history than have many of those of the Old World. 



III. Agricultural Peoples — Origins. 



The third, or epi-Paljeolithic drift, it has been suggested, was corre- 

 lated with the intensification of the desert in northern Africa and south- 

 western Asia. That great change apparently had the further effect of causing 

 pressure of population on the Nile and Euphrates and possibly the Indus 

 as well, all rivers with regular floods running through dry, or, then, fairly 

 dry open country with a warm season. In or near these river- valleys, 

 and probably other minor ones of the Syria-Palestine region, there arose, 

 perhaps at one, perhaps in more than one, place the art of cultivation. 

 Barley apparently is native to south-western Asia and north-eastern Africa, 

 and the wild ancestors of our wheats include plants native to south-western 

 Asia, but it is well known that the story of domestic wheat is a complex 

 one. These facts suggest that the Fertile Crescent and Egypt are the first 

 homes of agriculture, while the Indus civilisation maybe an early derivative. 

 All these rivers permitted and encouraged irrigation, and the deposit of 

 silt from floods gives a renewal of fertility, so exhaustion of the soil, a 

 serious difficulty in later extensions of agriculture to other lands, was not 

 a problem of early cultivators near the rivers, and this was no doubt a 

 great help to settlement. The courses of the Euphrates and Indus were 

 conspicuously subject to variation, whereas the Nile is confined in its 

 famous slot and its peasantry has gone on from time immemorial until 

 near our own day with a remarkable measure of constancy as regards the 



