Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography by Ellen Churchill Semple
page 91 of 853 (10%)
page 91 of 853 (10%)
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Judea, and Lot the plains of Jordan near the settled district of
Sodom.[103] [Sidenote: Geographical mark of low-type societies.] The larger the amount of territory necessary for the support of a given number of people, whether the proportion be due to permanent poverty of natural resources as in the Eskimo country, or to retarded economic development as among the Indians of primitive America or the present Sudanese, the looser is the connection between land and people, and the lower the type of social organization. For such groups the organic theory of society finds an apt description. To quote Spencer, "The original clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lack density. Creatures of low type occupy large spaces considering the small quantity of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spread over areas that are wide relatively to the number of their component individuals."[104] In common language this means small tribes or even detached families sparsely scattered over wide areas, living in temporary huts or encampments of tepees and tents shifted from place to place, making no effort to modify the surface of the land beyond scratching the soil to raise a niggardly crop of grain or tubers, and no investment of labor that might attach to one spot the sparse and migrant population. [See density maps pages 8 and 9.] [Sidenote: Land and state.] The superiority over this social type of the civilized state lies in the highly organized utilization of its whole geographic basis by the mature community, and in the development of government that has followed the increasing density of population and multiplication of activities |
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