Note 51 — Chapter II · —Classes Of Geographic Influences

The Indians of South America, though all fundamentally of the same ethnic stock, are variously acclimated to the warm, damp, forested plains of the Amazon; to the hot, dry, treeless coasts of Peru; and to the cold, arid heights of the Andes. The habitat that bred them tends to hold them, by restricting the range of climate which they can endure. In the zone of the Andean slope lying between 4,000 and 6,000 feet of altitude, which produces the best flavored coffee and which must be cultivated, the imported Indians from the high plateaus and from the low Amazon plains alike sicken and die after a short time; so that they take employment on these coffee plantations for only three or five months, and then return to their own homes. Labor becomes nomadic on these slopes, and in the intervals these farm lands of intensive agriculture show the anomaly of a sparse population only of resident managers.51 Similarly in the high, dry Himalayan valley of the upper Indus, over 10,000 feet above sea level, the natives of Ladak are restricted to a habitat that yields them little margin of food for natural growth of population but forbids them to emigrate in search of more,—applies at the same time the lash to drive and the leash to hold, for these highlanders soon die when they reach the plains.52 Here are two antagonistic geographic influences at work from the same environment, one physical and the other social-economic. The Ladaki have reached an interesting resolution of these two forces by the institution of polyandry, which keeps population practically stationary.