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0464 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
アジアの鼓動 : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / 464 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000233
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sufficient degree of warmth and of rainfall to make agricul-
ture easy and profitable, but not enough to be enervating;
that the winters shall be cool enough to be bracing, but not
deadening; and that the relation of summer and winter shall
be such that with forethought every man can support him-
self and his family in comfort the year round, while without
forethought he and his will suffer seriously. Comparatively
clear, dry air and high barometric pressure appear to be
subsidiary conditions favorable to human progress.
The evidence of climatic changes which we have found
in the Old World seems to render it probable that these
conditions have prevailed in each of the great countries of
history at the time when it has risen to the highest degree
of civilization and power. Therefore we may conclude that
long-continuing changes of climate have been one of the
controlling causes of the rise and fall of the great nations
of the world. The Dark Ages, at first sight, do not seem
to correspond to this conclusion. Climatic conditions, ac-
cording to our hypothesis, were much like those of to-day.
Accordingly, we should expect to find rapid progress of
civilization in northern Europe. The discrepancy is easily
explained. At the beginning of the Christian era, the vast
plains of Central Asia appear to have supported untold
hordes of nomads. When the plains began to grow rapidly
drier, the inhabitants must have suffered sorely. According
to Hahn, a rainfall of twenty inches a year in New South
Wales makes it possible to keep over six hundred sheep on a
square mile of land; with a rainfall of thirteen inches only
about a hundred can be kept; and with ten inches only ten
sheep. During the short space of a thirty-six-year cycle,