PROCESSES OF HISTORY
tions under different environmental conditions. If it is the hardy northerner who is 'progressive' at one time, at another it is the Akkadian and Sumerian in the hothouse of the Persian Gulf. If the village-community is a response to the relentless winter of the Russian steppes, it has also persisted in torrid India, Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete, and Greece may possibly be regarded as protected areas, but if the rise of civilization is dependent upon isolation, how shall we account for the early development of Lagash and Nippur? How, too, shall we account for the absence of such developments in a hundred spots more isolated and protected still? If Greek climate and habitat are to be accepted as prepotent influences in the production of Periclean Athens, and German climate and habitat as determining factors in the development of the military power of today, why have not these relatively constant factors been equally operative in past and present times?
Evidently, then, neither the race theory, nor that of habitat offers an adequate basis for an explanation of how man has come to be as he is, and hence we are driven to inquire what other types of theory have been advanced.
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