148 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXIU. No. 578. 



isolation. It has often been stated that the 

 geographical character of California was such 

 as to make it, if not the incubator of living 

 stocks, at least their nursery. 



However, no satisfactory explanation has 

 been given for the great diversity of languages 

 in North America. The fact that tribes have 

 wandered from Canada to New Mexico and 

 California and after ages of separation still 

 retained their former language indicates a 

 conservatism in linguistic change that renders 

 the isolation theory an unsatisfactory one. 



If, however, we do not consider linguistics 

 at all and look at the cultural habits of the 

 people in their more psychological aspects we 

 find more reason for assuming isolation to be 

 an important fact. Notwithstanding the 

 great number of linguistic stocks in Cali- 

 fornia all present cultures that can be distin- 

 guished from the cultures of other geograph- 

 ical areas by certain common characteristics. 

 In the plains we find two large powerful 

 stocks with a culture that had other distinctive 

 characteristics in common. Again, in the 

 east were the Iroquois and the Algonquin with 

 the same culture. Plains culture stopped at 

 the woods and woods culture stopped at the 

 grass line; California culture kept to the west 

 of the mountains and the plains culture to the 

 east of them. Thus we have well-defined cul- 

 ture areas corresponding to well-defined geo- 

 graphical areas. In one case high mountains 

 isolated a culture, in the other the woodlands 

 were the cause of separation. The woodlands 

 presented no great physical barriers to the 

 plains people, but the latter had acquired food, 

 shelter and transportation habits that made 

 the woods uncomfortable and a place to be 

 dreaded. A people accustomed to traveling 

 over the free and open plains must have felt 

 uneasy and afraid when traversing the woods, 

 because of inability to see what was just be- 

 yond, and the people of the woods must have 

 felt the insecurity of the plains because there 

 were few hiding places and no one could 

 travel without being seen. We all know how 

 the at-home feeling ties us to the tenement 

 or the palatial dwelling, as the case may be. 

 Then, again, a people that had been trained 

 to chase the buffalo on an open plain would 



not understand hunting in the woods and 

 would be driven back to the plains by the 

 demands of an empty stomach. It is difficult 

 for a race to change its food habits, perhaps 

 much more difficult than for us to change our 

 most pampered ways. Transportation habits 

 will hold a people to the watercourses, the 

 upland, the lowland, etc., as the case may be. 

 Even shelter habits may be binding, as the 

 snow-house building of the Eskimo and the 

 adobe wall-structure of the Pueblo. In gen- 

 eral it seems that culture is often confined to 

 a given area because the inhabitants are pre- 

 vented by physical barriers and cultural habits, 

 such as those of food, shelter, transportation, 

 etc., from affiliation with the culture of other 

 areas. The force of this theory in ethnog- 

 raphy is augmented by the fact that the bar- 

 riers are psychological rather than physical. 

 Yet, as psychological structures they are 

 erected upon physical foundations. It is the 

 character of the surface and climate with the 

 concomitant fauna and flora that reacts upon 

 the ethnic life of the more primitive inhabit- 

 ants of a given area. 



The fact that so many linguistic stocks 

 with the same culture are found in the same 

 area is probably due to migration, for if a 

 people do surmount the culture area barriers 

 and survive they soon take up by imitation 

 the habits of the older population, thus adopt- 

 ing the culture of the area. On the other 

 hand, they retain their language and physical 

 characteristics, which may be considered as 

 habits of greater stability. The fact that 

 California presents a culture area comprising 

 a large number of linguistic stocks in contrast 

 to the small number of stocks in other areas 

 may be due to the physical barriers that have 

 discouraged intermarriage and sociability, but 

 not the dissemination of ideas or practical and 

 religious knowledge. Thus the observed dis- 

 tribution of linguistic stocks is apparently not 

 a contradiction to the assumption made in the 

 foregoing. 



Without attempting to enumerate all the 

 factors that tend to isolate a culture' area we 

 may conclude that from a strict ethnic point 

 of view types of culture are due to geograph- 

 ical isolation in concomitance with psycho- 



