America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton.
The skeleton consists of six great bones, which may be said to form a
spheroidal tetrahedron, or pyramid with a triangular base, for when a
globe with a fairly rigid surface collapses because of shrinkage, it
tends to assume this form. That is what has happened to the earth.
Geologists tell us that during the thousand million years, more or less,
since geological history began, the earth has grown cooler and hence has
contracted. Moreover some of the chemical compounds of the interior have
been transformed into other compounds which occupy less space. For
these reasons the earth appears to have diminished in size until now its
diameter is from two hundred to four hundred miles less than formerly.
During the process of contraction the crust has collapsed in four main
areas, roughly triangular in shape. Between these stand the six ridges
which we have called the bones. Each of the four depressed areas forms a
side of our tetrahedron and is occupied by an ocean. The ridges and
the areas immediately flanking the oceans form the continents. The side
which we may think of as the base contains the Arctic Ocean. The ridges
surrounding it are broad and flat. Large parts of them stand above
sea-level and form the northern portions of North America, Europe, and
Asia. A second side is the Pacific Ocean with the great ridge of the two
Americas on one hand and Asia and Australia on the other. Next comes the
side containing the Indian Ocean in the hollow and the ridges of Africa
and Australia on either hand. The last of the four sides contains the
Atlantic Ocean and is bounded by Africa and Europe on one hand and North
and South America on the other. Finally the tip of the pyramid projects
above the surrounding waters, and forms the continent of Antarctica.
It may seem a mere accident that this tip lies near the South Pole,
while the center of the opposite face lies near the North Pole. Yet
this has been of almost infinite importance in the evolution not only of
plants and animals but of men. The reason is that this arrangement gives
rise to a vast and almost continuous land mass in comparatively high
latitudes. Only in such places does evolution appear to make rapid
progress. *
* W. D. Matthew, "Climate and Evolution," N. Y. Acad. Sci., 1915.
Evolution is especially stimulated by two conditions. The first is that
there shall be marked changes in the environment so that the process
of natural selection has full opportunity to do its work. The second is
that numerous new forms or mutants, as the biologists call them, shall
be produced. Both of these conditions are most fully met in large
continents in the temperate zone, for in such places climatic variations
are most extreme. Such variations may take the form of extreme changes
either from day to night, from season to season, or from one century to
another. In any case, as Darwin long ago pointed out, they cause some
forms of life to perish while others survive. Thus climatic variations
are among the most powerful factors in causing natural selection and
hence in stimulating evolution. Moreover it has lately been shown
that variations in temperature are one of the chief causes of organic
variation. Morgan and Plough, * for example, have discovered that when a
certain fly, called the drosophila, is subjected to extremes of heat or
cold, the offspring show an unusually strong tendency to differ from
the parents. Hence the climatic variability of the interior of large
continents in temperate latitudes provides new forms of life and then
selects some of them for preservation. The fossils found in the rocks
of the earth's crust support this view. They indicate that most of the
great families of higher animals originated in the central part of the
great land mass of Europe and Asia. A second but much smaller area of
evolution was situated in the similar part of North America. From these
two centers new forms of life spread outward to other continents. Their
movements were helped by the fact that the tetrahedral form of the earth
causes almost all the continents to be united by bridges of land.
* Unpublished manuscript.
If any one doubts the importance of the tetrahedral form, let him
consider how evolution would have been hampered if the land of the globe
were arranged as isolated masses in low latitudes, while oceans took
the place of the present northern continents. The backwardness of the
indigenous life of Africa shows how an equatorial position retards
evolution. The still more marked backwardness of Australia with its
kangaroos and duck-billed platypuses shows how much greater is the
retardation when a continent is also small and isolated. Today, no less
than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of
the tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions
that favor rapid evolution. They are the dominant factors in determining
that America shall be one of the two great centers of civilization.
If North and South America be counted as one major land mass, and
Europe, Asia, and Africa as another, the two present the same general
features. Yet their mountains, plains, and coastal indentations are so
arranged that what is on the east in one is on the west in the other.
Their similarity is somewhat like that of a man's two hands placed palms
down on a table.
On a map of the world place a finger of one hand on the western end of
Alaska and a finger of the other on the northeastern tip of Asia and
follow the main bones of the two continents. See how the chief mountain
systems, the Pacific "cordilleras," trend away from one another,
southeastward and southwestward. In the centers of the continents they
expand into vast plateaus. That of America in the Rocky Mountain region
of the United States reaches a width of over a thousand miles,
while that of Asia in Tibet and western China expands to far greater
proportions.
From the plateaus the two cordilleras swing abruptly Atlantic-ward. The
Eurasian cordillera extends through the Hindu Kush, Caucasus, and Asia
Minor ranges to southern Europe and the Alps. Then it passes on into
Spain and ends in the volcanoes of the Canary Islands. The American
cordillera swings eastward in Mexico and continues as the isolated
ranges of the West Indies until it ends in the volcanoes of Martinique.
Central America appears at first sight to be a continuation of the
great cordillera, but really it is something quite different--a mass
of volcanic material poured out in the gap where the main chain of
mountains breaks down for a space. In neither hemisphere, however, is
the main southward sweep of the mountains really lost. In the Old World
the cordillera revives in the mountains of Syria and southern Arabia and
then runs southward along the whole length of eastern Africa. In America
it likewise revives in the mighty Andes, which take their rise fifteen
hundred miles east of the broken end of the northern cordillera in
Mexico. In the Andes even more distinctly than in Africa the cordillera
forms a mighty wall running north and south. It expands into the plateau
of Peru and Bolivia, just as its African compeer expands into that of
Abyssinia, but this is a mere incident. The main bone, so to speak,
keeps on in each case till it disappears in the great southern ocean.
Even there, however, it is not wholly lost, for it revives in the cold,
lofty continent of Antarctica, where it coalesces once more with the
other great tetrahedral ridges of Africa and Australia.
It is easy to see that these great cordilleras have turned most of the
earth's chief rivers toward the Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans. That
is why these two oceans with an area of only forty-three million square
miles receive the drainage from twenty million square miles of
land, while the far larger Indian and Pacific Oceans with an area of
ninety-one million square miles receive the rivers of only ten million
square miles. The world's streams of civilization, like the rivers of
water, have flowed from the great cordilleras toward the Atlantic. Half
of the world's people, to be sure, are lodged in the relatively small
areas known as China and India on the Pacific side of the Old World
cordillera. Nevertheless the active streams of civilization have flowed
mainly on the other side--the side where man apparently originated. From
the earliest times the mountains have served to determine man's chief
migrations. Their rugged fastnesses hinder human movements and thereby
give rise to a strong tendency to move parallel to their bases. During
the days of primitive man the trend of the mountains apparently directed
his migrations northeastward to Bering Strait and then southeastward
and southward from one end of America to the other. In the same way the
migrations to Europe and Africa which ultimately reached America moved
mainly parallel to the mountains.
From end to end of America the great mountains form a sharp dividing
line. The aboriginal tribes on the Pacific slope are markedly different
from those farther east across the mountains. Brinton sums the case up
admirably:
"As a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with any
east of the mountains. What is more singular, although they
differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked
anthropologic similarities, physical and psychical. Virchow has
emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern point of
Vancouver's Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to those from the
southern coast of California; and this is to a degree true of many
intermediate points. Not that the crania have the same indices. On the
contrary, they present great and constant differences within the same
tribe; but these differences are analogous one to the other, and on
fixed lines.
"There are many other physical similarities which mark the Pacific
Indians and contrast them with those east of the mountains. The eyes are
less oblique, the nose flatter, the lips fuller, the chin more pointed,
the face wider. There is more hair on the face and in the axilla, and
the difference between the sexes is much more obvious.
"The mental character is also in contrast. The Pacific tribes are more
quiet, submissive, and docile; they have less courage, and less of that
untamable independence which is so constant a feature in the history of
the Algonquins and Iroquois." *
* D. G. Brinton, "The American Race," pp. 103-4.
Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions
where people dwell in greatest numbers. The plains in the two great land
masses of the Old World and the New have the same inverse or right- and
left-handed symmetry as the mountains. In the north the vast stretches
from the Mackenzie River to the Gulf of Mexico correspond to the plains
of Siberia and Russia from the Lena to the Black Sea. Both regions have
a vast sweep of monotonous tundras at the north and both become fertile
granaries in the center. Before the white man introduced the horse, the
ox, and iron ploughs, there prevailed an extraordinary similarity in the
habits of the plains Indians from Texas to Alberta. All alike depended
on the buffalo; all hunted him in much the same way; all used his skins
for tents and robes, his bones for tools, and his horns for utensils.
All alike made him the center of their elaborate rituals and dances.
Because the plains of North America were easy to traverse, the
relatively high culture of the ancient people of the South spread into
the Mississippi Valley. Hence the Natchez tribe of Mississippi had a
highly developed form of sun-worship and a well-defined caste system
with three grades of nobility in addition to the common people. Even
farther north, almost to the Ohio River, traces of the sun-worship of
Mexico had penetrated along the easy pathway of the plains.
South of the great granaries of North America and Eurasia the plains are
broken, but occur again in the Orinoco region of South America and
the Sahara of Africa. Thence they stretch almost unbroken toward the
southern end of the continents. In view of the fertility of the plains
it is strange that the centers of civilization have so rarely been
formed in these vast level expanses.
The most striking of the inverse resemblances between America and the
Old World are found along the Atlantic border. In the north of Europe
the White Sea corresponds to Hudson Bay in America. Farther toward the
Atlantic Ocean Scandinavia with its mountains, glaciers, and fiords
is similar to Labrador, although more favored because warmer. Next
the islands of Great Britain occupy a position similar to that of
Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. But here again the eastern
climate is much more favorable than the western. Although practically
all of Newfoundland is south of England, the American island has only
six inhabitants per square mile, while the European country has six
hundred. To the east of the British Isles the North Sea, the Baltic, and
Lakes Ladoga and Onega correspond in striking fashion to the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, the river of the same name, and the Great Lakes from Ontario
to Superior. Next the indented shores of western France and the
peninsula of Spain resemble our own indented coast and the peninsula
of Florida. Here at last the American regions are as favored as the
European. Farther south the Mediterranean and Black seas penetrate far
into the interior just as does the Gulf of Mexico, and each continent is
nearly cut in two where the canals of Suez and Panama respectively have
been trenched. Finally in the southern continents a long swing eastward
in America balances a similar swing westward in Africa. Thus Cape Saint
Roque and Cape Verde are separated by scarcely 16 degrees of longitude,
although the extreme points of the Gulf of Mexico and the Black Sea are
140 degrees apart. Finally to the south of the equator the continents
swing away from one another once more, preserving everywhere the same
curious inverse relationship.
Even more striking than the inverse resemblance of the New World to the
Old is the direct similarity of North and South America. In physical
form the two continents are astonishingly alike. Not only does each have
the typical triangular form which would naturally arise from tetrahedral
shrinking of the globe, but there are four other cardinal points of
resemblance. First, in the northeast each possesses an area of extremely
ancient rocks, the Laurentian highlands of Quebec and Labrador in North
America and the highlands of Guiana in South America. Second, in the
southeast lie highlands of old but not the most ancient rocks stretching
from northeast to southwest in the Appalachian region of North America,
and in the Brazilian mountains of the southern continent. Third, along
the western side of each continent recent crustal movements supplemented
by volcanic action on a magnificent scale have given rise to a complex
series of younger mountains, the two great cordilleras. Finally, the
spaces between the three mountain masses are occupied by a series of
vast confluent plains which in each case extend from the northern ocean
to the southern and bend around the southeastern highlands. These plains
are the newest part of America, for many of them have emerged from the
sea only in recent geological times. Taken as a whole the resemblance
between the two continents is striking.
If these four physiographic provinces of North and South America lay in
similar latitudes in the respective continents we might expect each pair
to have a closely similar effect on life. In fauna, flora, and even in
human history they would present broad and important resemblances. As a
matter of fact, however, they are as different as can well be imagined.
Where North America, is bathed by icy waters full of seals and floating
ice South America is bathed by warm seas full of flying-fish and coral
reefs. The northern continent is broadest in the cool latitudes that are
most favorable for human activity. The southern expands most widely in
latitudes whose debilitating monotony of heat and moisture is the
worst of handicaps to human progress. The great rivers of the northern
continent correspond very closely to those of the southern. The
Mackenzie, however, is bound in the rigid bands of winter for eight
months each year, while the Orinoco, the corresponding South American
river, lies sweltering under a tropical sun which burns its grassy
plains to bitter dust even as the sharp cold reduced the Mackenzie
region to barren tundra. The St. Lawrence flows through fertile grain
fields and the homes of an active people of the temperate zone, but the
Amazon winds its slow way amid the malarious languor of vast tropical
forests in which the trees shut out the sky and the few natives are
apathetic with the eternal inertia of the hot, damp tropics.
Only when we come to the Mississippi in the northern continent and
the Rio de la Plata in the southern do we find a pair of rivers which
correspond to any degree in the character of the life surrounding them,
as well as in their physiographic character. Yet even here there is a
vast difference, especially in the upper courses of the river. Each at
its mouth flows through a rich, fertile plain occupied by a progressive,
prosperous people. But the Rio de la Plata takes its rise in one of the
world's most backward plains, the home of uncivilized Indians,
heartless rubber adventurers, and the most rapacious of officials. Not
infrequently, the degenerate white men of these regions, yielding to
the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most
outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight
provocation. The natives in turn hate their oppressors, and when the
chance comes betray them or leave them to perish in sickness and misery.
The upper Mississippi, on the other hand, comes from a plain where
agriculture is carried on with more labor-saving devices than are found
anywhere else in the world. There States like Wisconsin and Minnesota
stand in the forefront of educational and social progress. The contrasts
between the corresponding rivers of the two Americas are typical of the
contrasts in the history of the two continents.