Civilization and climate / by Ellsworth Huntington.

  • Huntington, Ellsworth, 1876-1947.
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civilization and climate / by Ellsworth Huntington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    scraps of information set down in most cases accidentally and with no idea of their possible significance in the distant future. Such evidence has, of course, great value, and must be studied assiduously. Nevertheless, it is inevitably subordinate to the geological type of evidence, which may be either physiographic, botanical, or archaeological. It seems clear, then, that the ultimate decision as to whether climatic changes have taken place on a large scale during his¬ torical times does not rest with historians. It rests primarily with persons who are trained in climatological, and especially geological, methods. During the last ten years geographers as a whole, in spite of some exceptions, seem to have become per¬ suaded that the historical period has witnessed a series of cli¬ matic pulsations like those of the prehistoric or post-glacial period although on a smaller scale. According to their own written statement in answer to a questionnaire, over nine tenths of the geographers of America, if wTe may judge from the fifty who have expressed their opinions, hold this view, although they are not quite so fully agreed as to how great the effect of these pulsations upon man may have been. Of course it is possible that a few geographers failed to answer the questionnaire be¬ cause they did not wish to express an opinion contrary to mine. I think, however, that the number of such is very limited, for most of those who are known to hold views unlike my own ex¬ pressed them freely. Even when all due allowance is made for failures to answer, it seems clear that among the people who are best competent to weigh the evidence the great majority believe in pulsations of climate. If these geographers with a geological training are right, there seems to be no escape from the conclusion that during certain periods of ancient history the climate of places like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North India approached the optimum more closely than at present. Since the lower stage of culture in those early days presumably caused the optimum temperature for human progress to be higher than