The character of races as influenced by physical environment, natural selection and historical development / by Ellsworth Huntington.

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

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The character of races as influenced by physical environment, natural selection and historical development / by Ellsworth Huntington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    age of Cambodia came to an end after enduring about four hun dred years. Only in a few rare instances does one find so sud den an outburst of art, or one which rises so promptly to such brilliancy and ends so abruptly without leaving any real succes sors either in its own region or elsewhere, so far as we are aware. Little by little the outlines of the history of Cambodia are taking form. Its builders were the Khmers, a part of the Brah man race, those Children of the Sun who appear to have been the last main body of invaders to pour into India before the Christian era. According to an unverified tradition, during the fourth century before Christ a certain prince of Delhi strove to make his father divide the kingdom with him. Failing that, he moved eastward with a great band of followers. This band, it is said, became the ancestors of the Khmers, who finally reached Cambodia. How true this story is we do not know, but this much we may accept with considerable certainty: The Brahmans came from somewhere in central Asia, migrating down into India across the western end of the great mass of central moun tains or through the deserts of Afghanistan and its neighbors. Such a migration, as we shall presently see, is a strenuous process and involves great natural selection. If the men migrate alone there is almost invariably much fighting as they press into new regions. The most inefficient, cowardly, and dull are left at home or soon fall by the way. As the migrants press farther into new lands, the ones who are less brave, less resourceful, and less vigorous are killed in battle or die of disease. Thus such a migration weakens the community from which it starts, but pro duces at the end a small body of highly picked and very compe tent people, the cream of the group from which it fared forth. If the whole community migrates—men, women, and children —as appears to have happened in most of the ancient migrations and presumably in the case of the Brahmans, the process of selec tion takes place even more intensely. Imagine what it is like for women with little children to move with their husbands into new and perhaps hostile lands across mountains, rivers, and des erts; in summer or winter; in storm and flood; and at any and