Ellsworth Huntington Quotes
History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.
Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.
In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous woodland of the north.
The coast of British Columbia was one of the three chief centers of aboriginal America.
Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.
We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.
Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.
As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.
For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race.
In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home.
Although farming of any sort was almost as impossible in the plains as in the dry regions of winter rains farther west, the abundance of buffaloes made life much easier in many respects.
Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man.
Curiously enough man's body and his mind appear to differ in their climatic adaptations.
Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains, coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon man.
A journey of four hundred and thirty miles can be made in any part of the United States, but in Turkey it takes as many days.
From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment.
Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by different paths.
Man could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency.
It will be a vast boon to mankind when we learn to prophesy the precise dates when cycles of various kinds will reach definite stages.
