But this is only one part of the distribution of the garden-culture. Far
north along the Atlantic seaboard, and as far inland as the mild
Atlantic climate is perceptible, the same type prevails. Its ancient
limit is traced meteorologically in Tacitus' complaints (for example) of
the austerity of the lands beyond the Rhine. In this northern region
grain crops pass from red to white wheat, from barley to oats, and from
both to rye. The ease with which the Muskogean potato and tomato have
been acclimatized, and their respective prevalence now in the Atlantic
and Mediterranean sections, illustrate exactly the place which primitive
hoe-culture held in the economy of the Old-World region. Early monuments
of this culture, in which hoe and ox-plough are equally conspicuous, are
the 'meraviglie' rock-carvings above Ventimiglia.[10] The fine flower of
it is the Minoan civilization of the Crete and the South Aegean.
Egyptian agriculture is also in great part hoe-work.
South-eastward, outside the Carpathians, and within them also, in the
great plain of Hungary, we meet a totally different regime; vast
featureless and treeless grasslands, extending past the Black Sea and
Caspian to the foot of the mountains of North Persia and the spurs of
the Central Asian highlands. Here, if Man is to maintain himself at all,
he must be master of tame animals which can eat the grass, and in turn
sustain him. South of the eastward continuation of the woodland Mountain
Zone, through Asia Minor into Persia, and also south of the
Mediterranean lake-region and the ridges of Syria and the 'Africa Minor'
of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, which partly enclose it, lies another
group of grasslands, Arabia and Sahara, desert-hearted, but capable of
sustaining a considerable population of nomad pastoral folk round their
margins and in oases, and of emitting them in volcanic emigrations now
and then.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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