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
In coastwise navigation, minor headlands and inshore islands were points
to steer by; and in that early maritime colonization, which had chiefly
a commercial aim, they formed the favorite spots for trading stations.
The Phoenicians in their home country fixed their settlements by
preference on small capes, like Sidon and Berytus, or on inshore
islets, like Tyre and Aradus,[427] and for their colonies and trading
stations they chose similar sites, whether on the coast of Sicily,[428]
Spain, or Morocco.[429] Carthage was located on a small hill-crowned cape
projecting out into the Bay of Carthage. The two promontories embracing
this inlet were edged with settlements, especially the northern arm,
which held Utica and Hippo,[430] the latter on the site of the modern
French naval station of Bizerta.
[Illustration: MAP OF ANCIENT PHOENICIAN AND GREEK COLONIES.]
[Sidenote: Outer edge and piracy.]
In this early Hellenic world, when Greek sea-power was in its infancy,
owing to the fear of piracy, cities were placed a few miles back from
the coast; but with the partial cessation of this evil, sites on shore
and peninsula were preferred as being more accessible to commerce,[431]
and such of the older towns as were in comparatively easy reach of the
seaboard established there each its own port. Thus we find the ancient
urban pairs of Argos and Nauplia, Troezene and Pogon, Mycenae and
Eiones, Corinth commanding its Aegean port of Cenchreae 8 miles away on
the Saronic Gulf to catch the Asiatic trade, and connected by a walled
thoroughfare a mile and a half long with Lechaeum, a second harbor on
the Corinthian Gulf which served the Italian commerce.[432] In the same
group belonged Athens and its Piraeus, Megara and Pegae, Pergamus and
Elaae in western Asia Minor.[433] These ancient twin cities may be taken
to mark the two borders of the coast zone. Like the modern ones which we
have considered above, their historical development has shown an advance
from the inner toward the outer edge, though owing to different causes.
However, the retired location of the Baltic and North Sea towns of
Germany served as a partial protection against the pirates who, in the
Middle Ages, scoured these coasts.[434] Lubeck, originally located nearer
the sea than at present, and frequently demolished by them, was finally
rebuilt farther inland up the Trave River.[435] Later the port of
Travemuende grew up at the mouth of the little estuary.
[Sidenote: Outer edge in colonization.]
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