THE EFFECTS OF GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMEST 1G3 



of the remains of ancient man have proved tliat no less than 

 twenty thousand years, prohably a much k)nfj;er time, has passed 

 since he first appeared upon the earth, and that he was then 

 little superior, either in mental or moral qualities, to the animals 

 hy which he was surrounded, while j^reatly their inferior in 

 strength. Whatever his origin, the causes which lifted him from 

 this low estate i)roceeded from without and not from within. 



The earliest traces of man are found in what is known hy 

 geologists as the Pliocene formation. They lie )»uried in deposits 

 of gravel or in caves, and consist of fragments of chii)ped flints 

 pointed into spear or arrow heads, and of bones (and in' some 

 cases of stones) shaped into rude fish-hooks. 



With these flints are found bones of animals, with probably a 

 few human bones. From these remains we gather that man had 

 not only learned to defend himself from the wild animals about 

 him, but probably to use their flesh for food and their skins for 

 clothing. He lived in caves, in trees, or in rude huts sometimes 

 built on piles or shell walls sufficiently se])arated from the land 

 to make him secure from attack. We have no evidence that the 

 use of fire was known to him. Gradually, step b}' step, we see 

 him by slow advances become through geographic environment 

 a hunter, a fisherman, a nomad. From a dweller in caves and 

 trees he becomes a dweller in tents — finally gathering into famil- 

 ies, tribes, citips, nations. 



80 much and so little do the gravels of river beds and rocks 

 tell us of early man. But in existing peoples, in various parts 

 of the earth— in the Dwarfs and Hottentots of Africa; in the 

 Andamans of the Indian ocean ; in the Papuans of the islands 

 of the Pacific; in Tierra del Fuego ; in the aborigines of Aus- 

 tralia; in the inhabitants of the Arctic regions— we find n)an 

 still in a very low stage of development, corresponding to, and 

 little superior to, that of the drift and cave men. That these 

 races have continued through so many ages in the same condi- 

 tion, and that others have risen through successive stages to the 

 highest civilization, we believe to be the result of geographic en- 

 vironment. Had the environment l)een everywhere the same, 

 progress must have been the same over the whole earth. lUit 

 with every degree of latitude, every change of altitude, every 

 variation of climate, every variation of rainfall conditions are 

 changed and progress is hastened or retardeil. 



Let us go back to primitive man as we still find him in E.jua- 

 torial Africa, in the Arctic regions, in Central Asia, as he was in 



