HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Nature of Human Geography.—All over the world the people of different places vary in appearance, dress, manners, and ideas. They eat different kinds of food, and enjoy different pleasures. They differ in the way they work and get a living, and in their government, education, and religion. Above all they vary in their capacity for work. Some, like the Scotch, are active in body and mind, and are able to make inventions or improvements. Others, like the Papuans of New Guinea, are slow in movement and so inactive in mind that they rarely think of doing anything, except as their ancestors did it.
These differences are the subject matter of Human Geography. They arise largely from differences in geographical surroundings, or physical environment, to use a more technical term. Hence, Human Geography may be defined as the study of the relation of geographical environment to human activities.
How Human Geography Should be Studied.—The science of human geography may be studied in many ways. One of the best is to think of it as a series of problems, or questions for which answers must be found. Some of these problems are large and complex like the problem of how far the progress of a given people is due to the geographical conditions under which they live. For example, why are the people of the forests of Central Africa primitive hunters and those of the steppes of Central Asia ignorant cattle raisers, while those of New Jersey are a highly civilized manufacturing and com mercial people. So great a problem can be solved only through the solution of many smaller ones, such as the effect of rainfall, vegetation, and distance from the ocean, upon food, clothing, shelter, and tools, and especially upon man's occupations, health, and energy. Even such secondary problems, however, are too complicated to be easily solved.
The way to solve them is first to study many minor problems. For example, even a child can see that since good grass does not grow in the forests of New Guinea, cattle cannot thrive there. It is equally
easy to solve the problem of why the people of Central Asia, where the thermometer often drops below zero, wear sheepskin coats, while those of Central Africa, where a temperature of 70° is considered cold, wear almost no clothing. Thus Human Geography may be thought of as a vast series of simple problems leading to others that are more complex. To both student and teacher the solution of such problems becomes intensely interesting as soon as the spirit of the work is well understood.
In this volume we shall study some of man's chief relations to his environment and find why these relations vary from one part of the world to another. While all the main phases of human geography will be considered, most of our attention will be devoted to the most practical parts, which are also the most interesting. The practical parts are the problems that are useable in our daily lives, those, for instance, that help us understand what we read in books, magazines, and newspapers, that enable us to discuss current events intelligently, and that guide us in plans for business or travel.
The Elements of Human Geography.—In spike of the vast num ber and great complexity of the problems of human geography, they can be classified into a few main types, the relation of which can be understood from Fig. I.
I. Location.—On the left of Fig. 1 are the five chief features of man's geographical surroundings. The first is location. The location of a man's home is the most important of all the geograph jcal facts that influence him. It determines whether he shall live in the torrid zone, the desert, or the frozen North. If his home is located in the interior of a continent, say in Colorado, he can scarcely be a sailor or a deep-sea fisherman. Again, location determines whether a person shall have only a few scattered neighbors, too back ward to support schools, as in Labrador; or a multitude of progressive neighbors close at hand, as in Illinois.