Note 104 — Chapter III · —Society And State In Relation To The Land

The larger the amount of territory necessary for the support of a given number of people, whether the proportion be due to permanent poverty of natural resources as in the Eskimo country, or to retarded economic development as among the Indians of primitive America or the present Sudanese, the looser is the connection between land and people, and the lower the type of social organization. For such groups the organic theory of society finds an apt description. To quote Spencer, "The original clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lack density. Creatures of low type occupy large spaces considering the small quantity of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spread over areas that are wide relatively to the number of their component individuals."104 In common language this means small tribes or even detached families sparsely scattered over wide areas, living in temporary huts or encampments of tepees and tents shifted from place to place, making no effort to modify the surface of the land beyond scratching the soil to raise a niggardly crop of grain or tubers, and no investment of labor that might attach to one spot the sparse and migrant population. [See density maps pages 8 and 9.]