The most important signs of independence as a geographic unit, however, are imparted to the Ukraine by its anthropogeographical conditions, to which we shall turn our attention in Book II of this little work. We have now become acquainted with the natural foundations of the Ukraine as a geographic unit. One important characteristic of this geographic entity must especially attract our attention. The name of the country is Ukraine, which means border-country, march-land. It is an old historical name which originated in the course of the centuries and has become customary. And yet it is significant as hardly another name of a land or people could well be. For the Ukraine is a true borderland Europe, between Eastern Europe, and Western Asia. It lies on the borders of the European plicated mountain-girdle and of the Eastern European table-land. The Ukrainian Horst constitutes a tectonic border-post for the development of the entire European folded area. In the morphological sense as well, the Ukraine constitutes a decided borderland. Here the glacial formations give way to the erosive and flattening formation. Climatologically, too, the Ukraine is a decided borderland. Yet, most of all, does the character of the Ukraine as a land of boundaries and transitions appear in its biogeographical and anthropogeographical [12]conditions. In the Ukraine are merged the boundaries of two European forest regions—of the sub-steppes, transition-steppe, prairie-steppe zone, and of the Mediterranean region. The Ukraine is situated upon the boundaries of the European family of peoples—of Slavdom, of European culture—and, at the same time, upon the boundaries of that anthropogeographical structure which is so remarkable and so little known—the body social of Eastern Europe. [Contents] Location and Size