Nearer East / [D.G. Hogarth].

  • Hogarth, D. G. (David George), 1862-1927.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Nearer East / [D.G. Hogarth]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER XVIII WORLD RELATION Finally, what place does this Region fill in the economy of the greater World ? In virtue of its position or its features and character, how far does it matter to the corporate human body ? The very part which it has played in the development of civilisation in the past has altered the significance of its geographical position in the present. When the civilised world was smaller, what we now regard as the Nearer East contained in itself both East and West, and also a Debatable Land between. Now it is neither East nor West but become all Debatable Land. Man attains to high independent civilisation only where natural conditions of climate and soil do not impose a severe strain on his infant powers ; and, in fact, he has emerged unassisted from barbarism only in large and well-watered plain countries of great natural fertility, blessed with genial but neither damp nor torrid climes. These conditions cannot be found at once except in the warmer belts of the two Temperate Zones, and are found, in fact, only in the northern. For the most part of the southern Zone, where it is not ocean, has been con- demned by special conditions of soil and climate to be desert, swamp, or forest. In the northern zone, however, there occur in succession from east to west four favourable areas, the great river valleys of central China, the plains of northern India, the lower basin of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the garden strip of the Nile. Here the seed of civilisation was encouraged to take root and able to grow to adolescence. But that it may both come to full flower, and rise