Viewing page 219 of 234

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

43.

[[underline]]ARCHAEOLOGICAL PHYSIOGRAPHY.[[/underline]]

Within recent years there has been initiated and partially developed in America a comparatively new science, one which the proposed American School in Peking can ill afford to disregard. I refer to the study of peoples in connection with their physical environment. It has come to light that climatic conditions and topography have frequently been the determining factors in the matter of tribal movements (mistakenly called by historians "conquests" or "flights" or "disappearances", as the case may be). It has also been proved that physical and even mental characteristics of races are molded by environment, and that, when we are dealing with long stretches of time, we much study not only the modern appearance of the country and its climate, but the ancient conditions under which the people lived. The key to all this is found in the work of the new school of geologists.
Happily for us, though we must for some years to come depend partly on foreigners for interpretation of Chinese literature and history, America may hope to contribute more in this branch of the subject than any other nation. 
Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, now at Yale University, has written several books and articles, the titles* of which will show how closely he is already associated with our own projects. The late
[[horizontal line]]
*"Explorations in Turkestan" (contribution to Vol. I)
"The Pulse of Asia"
"Palestine and Its Transformation"
"The Climatic Factor as Illustrated in Arid America"
"The Solar Hypothesis of Climatic Changes" (Bul.Geogr. Soc. Am.)
"Asia - a Geography Reader"

Transcription Notes:
Footnotes under the horizontal line at the end of the page.