Quotes from Ellsworth Huntington

From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment.

Surprising as it may seem, this study indicates that similar conditions are best for all sorts of races.

The buffalo is a surprisingly stupid animal.

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.

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

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.

Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains not only because they lacked iron tools but also because they had no draft animals.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The whole history of life is a record of cycles.

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

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.

Year by year we are learning that in this restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human beings.

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

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.

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.

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

Today, no less than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions that favor rapid evolution.

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