The influence of geographical environment on culture seems a matter not so much of logical inference as of direct observation. Taking our own continent, we know that cotton is raised in the South, that our wheat belt lies in Minnesota and the adjoining states and Canadian provinces, that the Rocky Mountain and some of the Plateau states are the seat of the mining industry while Florida and California form our tropical fruit orchards. With these obvious facts are combined correlations not so clear, perhaps, yet very convincing to the mind as yet undebauched by ethnological learning. What seems more natural than that culture in its highest forms should develop only in temperate regions, that the gloomy forests of the North be reflected in a mythology of ogres and trolls, that liberty should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and languish in the tepid plain, or that islanders should be expert mariners?
This geographical theory of culture bears a certain resemblance to the classical associationist theory in psychology. According to that doctrine, the mind is something in the nature of a wax tablet on which the outer world produces impressions and all the higher mental activities are, in the last instance, reducible to combinations of the represented impressions or ‘ideas’. Modern psychology, however, regards this system, fascinating as it appears at a first glance, as little better than an historical curiosity. The association of ideas itself is now conceived merely as a special manifestation of the synthetic nature of consciousness. In short, the tables are completely turned, and association, instead of explaining consciousness, is interpreted in terms of consciousness. The analogy with the geographical view of culture will become apparent in the course of our discussion.
To begin with the culture of our own country: The environmental features of southern California, of Nevada, and the South have not changed during the last few centuries. Yet, what do we find on considering the aboriginal cultures of these regions? Southern California and Nevada were unreclaimed desert wastes inhabited by a roving, non-agricultural population, the natural mining resources of the latter state remained untouched, no attempt was made to grow cotton in the Southern cotton area. How can such facts be interpreted on a geographical basis? Quite obviously, the reverse holds. The utilization of part of the environment, instead of being an automatic response, has for an indispensable prerequisite a certain type of culture. Granted the existence of an agricultural technique, attempts may be made to apply it even in a forbidding arid climate, where a more primitive culture would not be able to develop it. The unfavorable environment may have checked such development, and in so far forth exerted cultural influence at one stage, but it is unable to check it at another stage, where the preËxisting culture, instead of ‘remaining put’, molds the environment to its own purposes.
The case I have chosen is an extreme one because I have correlated environment with extremes of culture—one of the lowest forms of aboriginal North American culture and our modern advanced scientific methods of subduing nature to our will. But if we consider only the cruder forms of civilization the same point appears with equal clearness.
Professor Kirchhoff, by no means an extreme adherent of the geographical school since he does not reduce man to a mere automaton in the face of his surroundings, nevertheless believes in a far-reaching influence of the environment and cites in particular the resemblances between inhabitants of arid territories. Unfortunately for his argument we have glaring instances in which desert-like conditions coexist with disparate modes of culture not only in similar but in identical regions of the globe.
Thus, the Hopi and Navajo Indians have both occupied for a long period the same part of northeastern Arizona and on the environmental theory we should therefore expect among them the same mode of life. In this, however, we are thoroughly disappointed. The Hopi are intensive farmers who succeed in raising crops where white agriculturists fail; the Navajo also plant corn but to a distinctly lesser extent and under Spanish influence have readily developed into a pastoral people, raising sheep for food and wool. Though the same building material is available, the Hopi construct the well-known terraced sandstone houses with a rectangular cell as the architectural unit, while the Navajo dwell in conical earth-covered huts. North American ceramic art attains one of its highwater marks among the Hopi, while the pottery of the Navajo is hopelessly crude in comparison. Cotton was raised by the Hopi, but there is no trace of its use by the neighboring people. What is true of the material aspect of native life applies equally to its less tangible elements. There is at least one marked difference in the sexual division of labor: with the Hopi it is the man’s business to spin and weave while this work falls to woman’s share among the Navajo. The Hopi were always strict monogamists, while among the Navajo polygamy was permissible. In conjunction with their agricultural pursuits Hopi ceremonialism centered in the magico-religious production of rain; the Navajo applied often the identical ritualistic stock-in-trade to the cure of sickness. A stringent regulation of the Navajo social code forbids all conversation between son-in-law and mother-in-law; but the Hopi merely view the taboo as a Navajo idiosyncrasy. The general cast of Hopi psychology, as fashioned by Hopi society, is that of an eminently peaceable population; the Navajo rather recall in their bearing the warlike and aggressive tribes of the Plains. Where resemblances occur, as e.g., in the objective phase of the native cults, we are able to prove that the parallelism is due not to an independent response to environmental stimuli, but to contact and borrowing. But quite apart from such cases, the basic differences in Hopi and Navajo civilization show that the environment alone cannot account for cultural phenomena.
If we pass from the southwestern United States to South Africa, a corresponding situation confronts us. The same area at one time formed the habitat of the Bushmen and the Hottentots; yet, their mode of life varies fundamentally. The Bushmen are essentially hunters and seed-collectors, while the Hottentots are an eminently pastoral people. Caves and crude windbreaks form the Bushman’s original dwellings, while the Hottentots have mat-covered portable beehive-shaped huts. The Bushman’s principal weapons are bow and arrow, with the Hottentot these implements are of secondary importance as compared with the spear. It is true that not only material objects but even myths and folktales are shared by both tribes, but in many instances of this sort we have clearly a case not of independent response to the same external conditions but rather the result of borrowing. Thus, some of the traits common to Hottentot and Bushman, for example, a fair number of mythic episodes, occur likewise among the Bantu Negroes inhabiting contiguous but geographically different territory. One of the most interesting traits of ancient Bushman culture is the life-like representation of animals on rocks and the walls of caves. Oddly enough, these engravings and mural paintings, which distinguish the Bushmen from their South African neighbors, have their nearest parallels in the Spanish cave-paintings of PalÆolithic Europe. The picturing of the mammoth and reindeer by these old South European artists clearly proves that they belonged to a glacial epoch, during which geographical conditions could hardly have resembled those of the Kalahari desert.[2-iii]
One other illustration from the same general region of the Dark Continent is suggestive. The Ovambo and Herero, neighbors though they are, differ in the essential features of their economic life. While the Ovambo depend only to a very limited extent on their herds, deriving their sustenance mainly from the cultivation of millet and other plants, the Herero are the only non-agricultural Bantu people, being predominantly pastoral.
Instead of comparing the effect of environment as a whole on different peoples, we can also isolate its single factors, such as the presence of particular species of plants or animals. One of the strongest cases against the creative influence of environment on culture lies in the phenomena relating to the domestication of animals in the Old and the New World. The one animal domesticated in both hemispheres is the dog, which occurs in Neolithic Europe and is also found with archÆological remains in America. But while in the Old World there is in addition an imposing series of species subjected to man for definite economic utilization, it is only in Peru that the American natives entered into a symbiotic arrangement with other animals, viz., the llama and the alpaca. Why was not the bison of the great Plains tamed like the buffalo of southern Asia or the various races of cattle in the Eastern Hemisphere? No valid reason can be advanced on geographical grounds. More striking still in this regard is the difference between the hyperborean populations of Asia and North America. The Chukchee of north-easternmost Siberia and the Eskimo share the same climatic conditions and their territories are both inhabited by the reindeer (caribou). Yet the Chukchee breed half-tamed reindeer on a large scale, using the animals for food and draught with sledges, while no attempt in this direction was made by the Eskimo or any of their Indian neighbors. The same external condition fails to produce the same cultural result. But even among the Chukchee there is evidence that the use of reindeer did not take place in response to an environmental stimulus. It appears that the extraordinary development of reindeer breeding is a relatively new thing with the Chukchee, who were formerly hunters of sea-mammals like the Eskimo. Before the recent efflorescence of their reindeer culture, the Chukchee waged war on their southern neighbors, the Koryak, for the purpose of carrying off their herds; and altogether it seems that both Chukchee and Koryak adopted the idea of taming the reindeer from tribes of the Tungus stock living to the west and south.[3-iii] We are, then, dealing with another instance of acculturation due to contact.
The facts of domestication are unusually suggestive as regards our general problem for they show in an absolutely convincing manner that even where the same animals have been domesticated by different peoples the use to which they are put may differ widely and give a distinct aspect to this phase of culture. Thus, we find that of Siberian reindeer-breeders the Tungus and Lamut use their animals only for transportation, not for slaughter, and that many bands, unlike other Arctic populations, ride on their reindeer instead of harnessing them to sledges. It is true that a rationalistic motive can be given for the fact that the Chukchee do not ride reindeer-back since their variety seems physically unfit for the saddle. That, however, is not the essential point. We should like to know how the Tungus came to use the saddle with their animals while other tribes with the same variety did not do so, and for this positive reaction to their faunal environment geography furnishes no clue. A similar group of questions arises in connection with the horse. Wild horses were game animals in Solutrean times in Europe, their flesh forming in fact the staple diet. Domestication certainly set in at a very much later period and its economic consequences vary appreciably with different peoples and in different times. The Kirgis, for example, milk their mares, thus obtaining the famous kumyss, though the operation is difficult and even dangerous.[4-iii] The ancient Babylonians, Chinese, and East Indians used the horse as a draught-animal harnessed to war-chariots. Its use for riding was an invention of Central Asiatic nomads. In the most recent period the consumption of horse flesh is a matter of course among the poorer classes of continental Europe, revolting as the idea is not only to the white American but to some of the Plains Indians as well, according to the testimony of some of my informants. There is thus no such thing as the presence of the horse determining its cultural use in a definite sense.
Again, the ancient Chinese kept both sheep and goats, but the idea of utilizing wool for clothing was foreign to them. We have historical evidence for the fact that the use of wool for felt and rugs was taught to the Chinese in more recent times by the nomadic populations of central Asia. Most startling of all perhaps is the different attitude assumed in different countries towards cattle. To us nothing seems more obvious than that cattle should be kept both for meat and dairy products. This, however, is by no means a universal practice. The Zulu and other Bantu tribes of South Africa use milk extensively but hardly ever slaughter their animals except on festive occasions. On the other hand, we have the even more astonishing fact that Eastern Asiatics, such as the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indo-Chinese, have an inveterate aversion to the use of milk. Though the Chinese, as Dr. Laufer points out, have raised a variety of animals from which milk could be derived and have been in constant contact with Turkish and Mongol nations whose staple food consists in dairy products, they have never acquired what seems so obvious and useful an economic practice. Accordingly, Dr. Laufer justifiably concludes that “our consumption of animal milk cannot be looked upon as a self-evident and spontaneous phenomenon, for which it has long been taken, but that it is a mere matter of educated force of habit.”[5-iii] In other words, the use of environmental factors is not an automatic and necessary response to them but varies with the culture of the peoples concerned.
The creative impotence of environment and more particularly the subordinate part it plays as compared with purely cultural determinants of culture, such as the influence of a certain trait in a neighboring tribe or the preËxistence of indigenous cultural features, may be instructively illustrated by several other instances.
Thus, we find that of the Northern Athabaskans of western Canada, the southern Carrier and the Chilcotin Indians share with the Shuswap Indians of Salish stock the use of semi-subterranean huts which even in winter seem like ovens. Are we to recognize in this an adaptation to the inclemencies of the climate? Hardly, when we find that this type of dwelling is used precisely by those Athabaskans living farthest south, where of course the climate is much milder, while the more northern tribes of the family get along with crude double shelters about a central fireplace. The use of the semi-subterranean lodge by the Carrier and Chilcotin is perfectly explained as a contact phenomenon. They have simply adopted the idea from their Salish neighbors: the cultural environment has proved more effective than the physical environment in determining a cultural trait. Other members of the same family furnish corresponding instances. Though many of the Northern Athabaskans have long, snowy winters, only the Loucheux, who are in contact with the Eskimo, have adopted the wooden goggles of the Eskimo, which serve as a protection against snow-blindness. Similarly, they are the only members of the stock to substitute for the widespread Canadian toboggan the Eskimo sledge with runners.[6-iii]
As the physical environment is overshadowed in cultural significance by a neighboring culture, so it may vanish into nothingness in the face of what we may call cultural inertia—the tendency of a preËxisting cultural trait of indigenous growth to assert itself. A familiar example of this tendency is the exact imitation of forms of implements in quite different and often refractory material. Thus, the Central Eskimo generally make lamps and pots out of soapstone. In Southampton Island, where this material is lacking, they have not devised a new form but have at the expenditure of much ingenuity and labor cemented together slabs of limestone so as to produce the traditional shape.[7-iii] The same phenomenon appears in other fields. Grooved copper axes have been found in parts of the United States; their shape is patterned exactly on the stone axes characteristic of the same localities. The beginnings of the copper and bronze ages in Europe are equally suggestive in this regard. The incipient metallurgist does not automatically make the most of his material but slavishly follows his stone or bone models. His copper ornaments imitate bear’s teeth or bone beads, his implements resemble the stone celts and hammers of an earlier era.[8-iii] As Professor Boas points out on the basis of Bogoras’ descriptions, an equivalent development may be traced in the history of the Chukchee tent. This type of habitation is extremely clumsy and not at all well adapted to the roving life of the Reindeer division of the tribe, considerably hampering their progress. It represents, however, a variety of the older form of stationary house used when the Chukchee were a purely maritime people.[9-iii]
It might be objected that maladjustments of this sort are transitional, that just as the copper and bronze workers ultimately freed themselves from the influence of the preËxisting stone technique so the Chukchee would finally have abandoned their inconvenient tent and developed a new and more readily transportable lodge. This sounds, of course, very plausible but misses the point of the argument. Undoubtedly, a more and more perfect adaptation to elements of the physical surroundings has repeatedly taken place. But the very fact that culture history, on its material side, implies this progressive adjustment also implies that the cultural phenomena at different periods of time differ where the same environmental stimuli persist and therefore cannot be explained by them, which is what we have been trying to prove.
Indeed, environment is not only unable to create cultural features, in some instances it is even incapable of perpetuating them. Thus, pottery was once distributed over an extensive region in the New Hebrides but is now restricted to a few isolated localities on a single island. Again, in southeastern New Guinea ancient pottery has been found that vastly surpasses its present representatives in point of craftsmanship.[10-iii] A similar phenomenon has been noted in the Southwest of the United States, where the evolution and deterioration of glazed earthenware may be clearly traced in the same region.[11-iii] Dr. Rivers has pointed out an even more instructive example of cultural degeneration. In the Torres Islands of Melanesia the natives have no canoes for traversing the channels which separate their islands from one another but are obliged to use unseaworthy bamboo rafts inadequate even for fishing purposes. Yet there is evidence that the Torres Islanders once shared the art of canoe-making with their fellow-Oceanians and that it has died out in recent times independently of European influence. It is difficult to conceive of any people less likely a priori to lose the art of navigation than a South Sea Island group; yet, their maritime environment proved inadequate to preserve so vital a feature of their daily life.
To sum up: Environment cannot explain culture because the identical environment is consistent with distinct cultures; because cultural traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable environment; because they do not develop where they would be of distinct advantage to a people; and because they may even disappear where one would least expect it on geographical principles.
Shall we then cavalierly banish geography from cultural considerations? This would be manifestly going beyond the mark. Geographical phenomena can no more be discarded than can psychological phenomena. They represent in the first place a limiting condition. As cultures cannot contravene psychological principles so they cannot, except in a limited measure, override geographical factors. To use some drastically clear if somewhat hackneyed examples, the Eskimo do not eat coconuts nor do the Oceanians build snow-houses; where the horse does not occur it cannot be domesticated; in the Hopi country where watercourses are lacking navigation naturally did not develop. As Jochelson points out, the Koryak of northeastern Siberia cannot cultivate cereals because of the low temperature and they cannot succeed as cattle-breeders because of the poor quality of the grasses.[12-iii] This minimum recognition of environment as a purely negative factor, however, does not do full justice to it. Take the bison out of the Plains Indian’s life and his cultural atmosphere certainly changes. Nevertheless, we have seen that the presence of the bison by no means fully determined the cultural employment possible. Instead of hunting it as the Solutrean Europeans did the wild horse, the Indian might have domesticated it as his namesake by misnomer in Asia domesticated the buffalo. The environment, then, enters into culture, not as a formative but rather as an inert element ready to be selected from and molded. It is, of course, a matter of biological necessity for a people to establish some sort of adaptation to surrounding conditions, but such adaptation is no more spontaneously generated by the environment than are strictly biological adaptations. There are alternatives to adaptation—migration and destruction.
It is true, as Dr. Wissler has forcibly pointed out, that when some kind of adjustment has once been established it will tend to persist in the region of its origin.[13-iii] This, however, illustrates not so much the active influence of environment as rather the tremendous force of cultural inertia which tends to perpetuate an old muddling-along adjustment, however imperfect, provided only it has bare survival value.
Altogether we may illustrate the relations of culture to environment by an analogy used by Dr. Wissler in another connection, which also brings us back to my initial analogy of the environmental theory with the associationist system in psychology. The environment furnishes the builders of cultural structures with brick and mortar but it does not furnish the architect’s plan. As the illustrations cited clearly prove, there is a variety of ways in which the same materials can be put together, nay, there is always a range of choice as regards the materials themselves. The development of a particular architectural style and the selection of a special material from among an indefinite number of possible styles and materials are what characterize a given culture. Since geography permits more than a single adjustment to the same conditions, it cannot give the interpretation sought by the student of culture. Culture can no more be built up of environmental blocks than can consciousness out of isolated ideas; and as the association of ideas already implies the synthetizing faculty of consciousness, so the assemblage and use of environmental factors after a definite plan already implies the selective and synthetic agency of a preËxisting or nascent culture.
