83. Geographical Environment
When it comes to the second factor by which culture might theoretically be explained—physical environment or geography—similar difficulties are encountered.
It is of course plain that a primitive tribe under the equator would never invent the ice box, and that the Eskimo will not keep their food and water in buckets of bamboo, although it is possible that if the Eskimo had had bamboo carried to them by ocean currents, they would have been both glad and able to use it. The materials and opportunities provided by nature may be made use of by each people, while other materials not being provided, other arts or customs can therefore not be developed. But evidently this correspondence is mainly negative. Not performing an act because one lacks the opportunity by no means proves that the opportunity will necessarily lead to the performance. Two nations will live where there is ice to store and one will invent and the other fail to invent the ice chest. Whole series of peoples possess bamboo and clay, and yet some of them draw water in bamboo joints and others in pots. Obviously, natural environment does impose certain limiting conditions on human life; but equally obviously, it does not cause inventions or institutions.
The native Australians have wood and cord and flint but do not make bows and arrows. Their civilization had not advanced to the point where they were able to devise an efficient bow, and the requisite idea failed to be carried to them from elsewhere as it was to other peoples who also did not invent the weapon. The Polynesians, on the other hand, seem once to have had the weapon, as evidenced by their retaining it as a toy, but to have disused it, perhaps because they specialized on fighting with spears and clubs. Modern civilized people fight at long range, but have let bows go out of use, except for sport, because their knowledge of metallurgy and chemistry centuries ago progressed to the point where they could produce firearms. Development or lack of development or specialization of other cultural activities—social causes—thus determine more directly than other factors whether or not a people employ the bow and arrow. Of those mentioned, the Australians are the only ones with whom a factor of natural environment might be alleged to enter: namely, their isolation, which cut them off from communications and the opportunity to learn from other races. Yet such isolation is as much a matter of inability to traverse space as it is a matter of physical distance. A developed art of navigation would have abolished the Australian isolation. Thus, this seemingly environmental cause of a cultural fact depends for its effectiveness on a co-existing cultural cause. It is the latter which is the most immediate or specific cause.
In general, then, it may be concluded that the directly determining factors of cultural phenomena are not nature which gives or withholds materials, but the general state of knowledge and technology and advancement of the group; in short, historical or cultural influences.