Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-GeographySemple, Ellen Churchill
History
Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography
Semple, Ellen Churchill
Human beings -- Effect of environment on; Human geography
Similar in distribution and in mode of life are the aborigines of the
Philippines, the dwarf Negritos, who are still found inhabiting the
forests in various localities. They are dispersed through eight
provinces of Luzon and in several other islands, generally in the
interior, whither they have been driven by the invading Malays.[275] [See
map page 147.] But the Negritos crop out again in the mountain interior
of Formosa and Borneo, in the eastern peninsula of Celebes, and in
various islands of the Malay Archipelago as far east as Ceram and
Flores, amid a prevailing Malay stock. Toward the west they come to the
surface in the central highland of Malacca, in the Nicobar and Andaman
Islands, and in several mountain and jungle districts of India. Here
again is the typical geographic distribution of a moribund aboriginal
race, whose shrivelled patches merely dot the surface of their once wide
territory.[276] The aboriginal Kolarian tribes of India are found under
the names of Bhils, Kols and Santals scattered about in the fastnesses
of the Central Indian jungles, the Vindhyan Range, and in the Rajputana
Desert, within the area covered by Indo-Aryan occupation.[277] [See map
page 103.]
[Sidenote: Discontinuous distribution.]
Such broad, intermittent dispersal is the anthropological prototype of
the "discontinuous distribution" of biologists. By this they mean that
certain types of plants and animals occur in widely separated regions,
without the presence of any living representatives in the intermediate
area. But they point to the rock records to show that the type once
occupied the whole territory, till extensive elimination occurred, owing
to changes in climatic or geologic conditions or to sharpened
competition in the struggle for existence, with the result that the type
survived only in detached localities offering a favorable
environment.[278] In animal and plant life, the ice invasion of the
Glacial Age explains most of these islands of survival; in human life,
the invasion of stronger peoples. The Finnish race, which in the ninth
century covered nearly a third of European Russia, has been shattered by
the blows of Slav expansion into numerous fragments which lie scattered
about within the old ethnic boundary from the Arctic Ocean to the
Don-Volga watershed.[279] The encroachments of the whites upon the red
men of America early resulted in their geographical dispersion. The map
showing the distribution of population in 1830 reveals large detached
areas of Indian occupancy embedded in the prevailing white
territory.[280] The rapid compression of the tribal lands and the
introduction of the reservation system resulted in the present
arrangement of yet smaller and more widely scattered groups. Such
islands of survival tend constantly to contract and diminish in number
with the growing progress, density, and land hunger of the surrounding
race. The Kaffir islands and the Hottentot "locations" in South Africa,
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