238Section III.Whetham.
as the central plateau of Arabia, the north of Africa, the Steppes of Russia
and Central Asia, which appear to have no striking sequence of events
in their internal history, and yet have much influenced other lands. History
for them is the tale, often a transient one, either of a few sporadic out
bursts of their inhabitants over surrounding countries, altering the relation
ships of the adjacent populations, or of the passing sway and temporary
settlement among them of men from some civilisation, external and foreign
to their own. A very small part of the earth’s surface has contributed
an overwhelming share to the making of history, as now known to us.
The cause of this limitation must be sought principally in the study
of geographical conditions, and it is not unlikely that the phenomenon
could be analysed into a mere matter of mountain or plain, of extended
pasture land or indented coast line, of rainfall and water supply. As
long as men are engaged in a losing, or at best, a drawn battle with
Nature, we have little record of the struggle. Districts which will only
support a nomad population do not advance far in the scale of civilization.
But selection there is severe and ruthless, and, when such a population
breaks out from its bounds, it has all the qualities of hardihood, the
instincts of self-preservation, the intolerance of alien or weaker stocks,
which have been necessary to maintain its existence. It is in the regions
where Nature is most tractable, most kindly, yields best to appropriate
treatment that history begins in the triumphs of man’s ingenuity over
the natural obstacles with which he finds himself surrounded, and in
the contests of men for the favoured spots of the earth.
It is probable that some, at least, of the great movements of population
in the past have been caused by a gradual alteration of climate, a secular
variation in rainfall, which, at times, have slowly changed vast tracts of
country from a history-making area to a region of wandering tribes, whose
past, present and future merge into centuries of unrecorded existence.
Such an alteration would mean the exodus of a large proportion of the
population to find a settlement in more fertile lands.
Again, the stages of man’s gradual mastery over his environment must
be considered among the factors that change the character of history.
The cultivation of cereals, requiring tracts of moist or irrigated country,
the domestication of the horse, cow, and camel, the invention alike of the
rowing boat, the sailing ship, and the steam engine, are all epochs in
history. But none of these inventions remains long the exclusive property
of the people who may claim the original achievement. Such advances
are almost at once at the disposal of anyone who can profit by them.
They become part of the heritage of mankind, and are perhaps more of
the nature of a change in the setting of the drama, a shift in the stage
properties, than a piece of the history itself.
If we consider history in its usual and more limited sense, we find
we are dealing with societies in a state of change. Something, usually some
