advantageous local conditions as factors in Greek history.

It is a similar intercontinental location in the isthmian region between
the Mediterranean on the west and the ancient maritime routes of the
Red Sea and Persian Gulf on the east, which gave to Phoenicia the office
of middleman between the Orient and Occident,[240] and predestined its
conquest, now by the various Asiatic powers of Mesopotamia, now by the
Pharaohs of Egypt, now by European Greeks and Romans, now by a
succession of Asiatic peoples, till to-day we find it incorporated in
the Asiatic-European Empire of Turkey. Proximity to Africa has closely
allied Spain to the southern continent in flora, fauna, and ethnic
stock. The long-headed, brunette Mediterranean race occupies the Iberian
Peninsula and the Berber territory of northwest Africa.[241] This
community of race is also reflected in the political union of the two
districts for long periods, first under the Carthaginians, then the
Romans, who secured Hispania by a victory on African soil, and finally
by the Saracens. This same African note in Spanish history recurs to-day
in Spain's interest in Morocco and the influence in Moroccan affairs
yielded her by France and Germany at the Algeciras convention in 1905,
and in her ownership of Ceuta and five smaller _presidios_ on the
Moroccan coast. Compare Portugal's former ownership of Tangier.

In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location,
anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term.
The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternal
food-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over a
territory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meet
the frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or their
specific geographic location is thus defined by natural features of
mountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable to