Note 883 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

The historical development of island peoples bears always in greater or less degree the stamp of isolation; but this isolation may lead to opposite cultural results. It may mean in one case retardation, in another accelerated development. Its geographical advantages are distinctly relative, increasing rapidly with a rising scale of civilization. Therefore in an island habitat the race factor may operate with or against the geographic factor in producing a desirable historical result. If the isolation is almost complete, the cultural status of the inhabitants low, and therefore their need of stimulation from without very great, the lack of it will sink them deeper in barbarism than their kinsmen on the mainland. The negroes of Africa, taken as a whole, occupy a higher economic and cultural rank than the black races of Australia and Melanesia; and for this difference one cause at least is to be found in the difference of their habitats. The knowledge of iron, stock-raising, and many branches of agriculture were continental achievements, which belonged to the great eastern land-mass and spread from Egypt over Africa even to the Hottentot country; the lack of them among the Australians must be attributed to their insularity, which barred them from this knowledge, just as the ignorance of iron and other metals among the native Canary Islanders883 can only be ascribed to a sea barrier fifty-two miles wide. The scant acquaintance of the Balearic Islanders with iron in Roman days884 points to insular detachment. The lack of native domesticable animals in the Pacific archipelagoes illustrates another limitation incident to the restricted fauna of islands, though this particular lack also retarded the cultural development of primitive North America.