174. Culture-areas
The native cultures of the New World are signalized by the two outstanding traits already alluded to. First, they have come to us virtually in momentary cross section, flat and without perspective. In general there are few historic data extant about them. Second, they represent the civilizations of by far the greatest geographical extent and highest attainment that have developed independently, in the main at least, of the great web of culture growths which appear to have had their principal origin in the regions not far from the eastern Mediterranean. They offer, accordingly, a separate problem, and one which, on account of the dearth of temporal data, has had to be approached through the medium of space. As soon, therefore, as knowledge of American cultures became orderly, its organization was inevitably effected in terms of geography. The result has been the recognition of a series of culture-areas or culture-centers, several of which have already been referred to (§ [150-152]). These geographically defined types of culture are gradual and empirical findings. They are not the product of a scheme or imagination, nor the result of theory. They are not even the formulation of any one mind. They do represent a consensus of opinion as to the classification of a mass of facts, slowly arrived at, contributed to by many workers, probably accepted in exact identity by no two of them but in essential outlines by all; in short, a non-philosophical, inductive, mainly unimpeachable organization of phenomena analogous to the “natural” classification of animals and plants on which systematic biology rests.
These culture areas, centers, or types have been established with greater exactitude for North than for South America. The ten usually recognized (see [Fig. 34]) are:
1. Arctic or Eskimo: coastal
2. Northwest or North Pacific Coast: also a coastal strip
3. California or California-Great Basin
4. Plateau: the northern inter-mountain region
5. Mackenzie-Yukon: the northern interior forest and tundra tract
6. Plains: the level or rolling prairies of the interior
7. Northeast or Northern Woodland: forested