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
It was the great intellectual service of Copernicus that he conceived of
a world in motion instead of a world at rest. So anthropo-geography must
see its world in motion, whether it is considering English colonization,
or the westward expansion of the Southern slave power in search of
unexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, or
the early advance of the trappers westward to the Rockies after the
retreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining Indian
tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their
ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studying
increase of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creeping
higher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it
sees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim from
the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan's
doubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and feed its
redundant millions.
The whole complex relation of unresting man to the earth is the subject
matter of anthropo-geography. The science traces his movements on the
earth's surface, measures their velocity, range, and recurrence,
determines their nature by the way they utilize the land, notes their
transformation at different stages of economic development and under
different environments. Just as an understanding of animal and plant
geography requires a previous knowledge of the various means of
dispersal, active and passive, possessed by these lower forms of life,
so anthropo-geography must start with a study of the movements of
mankind.
[Sidenote: Mobility of primitive peoples.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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