Ellsworth Huntington Quotes

The Negro, however, has been tested on an extensive scale.

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.

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous woodland of the north.

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.

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.

After washing there was no place to pour the water except out of the window onto the heads of the people in the streets, which is the proper place to throw everything that is not wanted.

The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man’s boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind.

Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and waxed strong only in certain zones.

America is the last great goal of these migrations.

The buffalo is a surprisingly stupid animal.

Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth‘s skeleton.

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest numbers.

The evidence points to central Asia as man’s original home, for the general movement of human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward.

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.

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.

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature’s greatest healers.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.

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.