Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 62

The Cultural Landscape: An

Introduction to Human Geography (11th


Edition ■ Ebook PDF Version) ■ Ebook
PDF Version
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-cultural-landscape-an-introduction-to-human-geo
graphy-11th-edition-ebook-pdf-version-ebook-pdf-version/
CONTENTS

1 Basic Concepts 2

KEY ISSUE 1
Preface XIV
The Teaching and Learning Package XVIII
How Do Geographers Describe Where Things Are? 5
About The Author XX
Maps 5
About our Sustainability Initiatives XXI Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Book & MasteringGeography™ Walkthrough XXII Mapping a Disaster: Hurricane Katrina 7
Contemporary Tools 12
Contemporary Geographic Tools:
Electronic Navigation 12

KEY ISSUE 2
Why Is Each Point on Earth Unique? 14
Place: A Unique Location 14
Region: A Unique Area 16

KEY ISSUE 3
Why Are Different Places Similar? 20
Scale: From Local to Global 20
Space: Distribution of Features 22
Connections between Places 26

KEY ISSUE 4
Why Are Some Human Actions Not Sustainable? 30
Sustainability and Resources 30
Sustainability and Human–Environment
Relationships 34
Summary and Review 38
Key Terms 38

VII
VIII THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

2 Population and Health 42 3 Migration 76

KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1


Where Is the World’s Population Distributed? 45 Where Are Migrants Distributed? 79
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Distance of Migration 80
Spatial Analysis and the Census 45 U.S. Immigration Patterns 82
Population Concentrations 46
Population Density 48
KEY ISSUE 2
KEY ISSUE 2
Where Do People Migrate within a Country? 84
Interregional Migration 84
Why Is Global Population Increasing? 50 Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Components of Population Growth 50 Trail of Tears 87
Population Structure 54 Intraregional Migration 90

KEY ISSUE 3 KEY ISSUE 3


Why Does Population Growth Vary among Regions? 56 Why Do People Migrate? 92
The Demographic Transition 56 Reasons for Migrating 92
Malthus on Overpopulation 60 Migrating to Find Work 94
Population Futures 62
KEY ISSUE 4
KEY ISSUE 4 Why Do Migrants Face Obstacles? 96
Why Do Some Regions Face Health Threats? 64 Controlling Migration 96
Epidemiologic Transition 64 Contemporary Geographic Tools:
Infectious Diseases 67 Claiming Ellis Island 97
Health Care 70 Unauthorized Immigration 98
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village: Attitudes toward Immigrants 100
Overpopulation in Sub-Saharan Africa 73 Summary and Review 104
Summary and Review 74 Key Terms 104
Key Terms 74
CONTENTS IX

4 Folk and Popular 5 Languages 140


Culture 106
KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1
Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Where Are Languages Distributed? 143
Distributed? 109 Classification of Languages 144
Characteristics of Folk and Popular Culture 110 Distribution of Language Families 146
Origin and Diffusion of Folk and Popular Music 112

KEY ISSUE 2
Origin and Diffusion of Folk and Popular Sports 114

KEY ISSUE 2
Why Is English Related to Other Languages? 150
Distribution of Indo-European Branches 150
Where Are Folk and Popular Material Culture Origin and Diffusion of Language Families 154
Distributed? 116

KEY ISSUE 3
Folk and Popular Clothing 116
Folk and Popular Food Preferences 118
Distribution of Folk and Popular Housing 122 Why Do Individual Languages Vary among Places? 158
U.S. Housing 124 Dialects of English 158
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Distinguishing between Languages and Dialects 162
Documenting House Types through Fieldwork 125

KEY ISSUE 4
KEY ISSUE 3 Why Do People Preserve Local Languages? 164
Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal? 126 Language Diversity 164
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture 126 Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Challenges in Accessing Electronic Media 130 Preserving Lesser-Used Languages 171
Global Dominance of English 172
KEY ISSUE 4 Contemporary Geographic Tools:
The Death of English as a Lingua Franca? 173
Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face Sustainability
Challenges? 132 Summary and Review 178
Sustainability Challenges for Folk Culture 132 Key Terms 178
Sustainability Challenges for Popular Culture 134
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village Golf:
Folk or Popular Culture? 135
Summary and Review 138
Key Terms 138
X THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

6 Religions 180 7 Ethnicities 224

KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1


Where Are Religions Distributed? 183 Where Are Ethnicities Distributed? 227
Distribution of Religions 184 Ethnicities in the United States 228
Branches of Universalizing Religions 186 Distribution of Ethnicities in the
Ethnic Religions 190 United States 230

KEY ISSUE 2 KEY ISSUE 2


Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions? 192 Why Do Ethnicities Have Distinctive Distributions? 232
Origin of Religions 192 International Migration of Ethnicities 232
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Internal Migration of African Americans 234
Counting Religious Adherents 192 Segregation by Ethnicity and Race 236
Diffusion of Religions 196

KEY ISSUE 3
KEY ISSUE 3
Why Do Conflicts Arise among Ethnicities? 238
Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Ethnicities and Nationalities 238
Patterns? 200
Ethnic Competition 240
Sacred Space 200
Dividing Ethnicities 242
The Calendar 208

KEY ISSUE 4
Administration of Space 210

KEY ISSUE 4 Why Do Ethnicities Engage in Ethnic Cleansing and


Genocide? 246
Why Do Territorial Conflicts Arise among Religious Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans 247
Groups? 212
Contemporary Geographic Tools:
Religion versus Government Policies 212 Documenting Ethnic Cleansing 249
Religion versus Religion 215 Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Sub-Saharan
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village: Africa 252
West Bank Barrier: Security Fence or Segregation Wall 219 Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Summary and Review 222 Ethnic Cleansing and Drought 254

Key Terms 222 Summary and Review 256


Key Terms 256

X
CONTENTS XI

8 Political Geography 258 9 Development 298

KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1


Where Are States Distributed? 261 Why Does Development Vary among Countries? 301
A World of States 262 A Decent Standard of Living 302
Challenges in Defining States 264 A Long and Healthy Life 305
Development of State Concept 266 Access to Knowledge 306
Contemporary Geographic Tools:
KEY ISSUE 2 Collecting and Depicting Development Data 309

KEY ISSUE 2
Why Are Nation-states Difficult to Create? 268
Nation-states and Multinational States 268
Colonies 274 Why Does Development Vary by Gender? 310
Gender Inequality Measures 310

KEY ISSUE 3 Gender Inequality Trends 312


Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Why Do Boundaries Cause Problems? 276 Gender Inequality and the Environment 313
Types of Boundaries 276
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village: KEY ISSUE 3
The Law of the Sea 277
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Why Are Energy Resources Important for
Demarcating Boundaries with GIS 279 Development? 314
Shapes of States 280 Energy Supply and Demand 314
Governing States 282 Alternative Energy Sources 322
Electoral Geography 284
KEY ISSUE 4
KEY ISSUE 4 Why Do Countries Face Obstacles to Development? 328
Why Do States Cooperate and Compete with Each Two Paths to Development 328
Other? 286 Financing Development 332
Cold War Competition and Alliances 286 Making Progress in Development 338
Terrorism by Individuals and Organizations 290 Summary and Review 341
State Support for Terrorism 292
Key Terms 341
Summary and Review 296
Key Terms 296
XII THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

10 Food and Agriculture 344 11 Industry and


Manufacturing 392
KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1
Where Did Agriculture Originate? 347 Where Is Industry Distributed? 395
Invention of Agriculture 347 The Industrial Revolution 395
Comparing Subsistence and Commercial Industrial Regions 396
Agriculture 350

KEY ISSUE 2
KEY ISSUE 2
Why Are Situation and Site Factors Important? 398
Why Do People Consume Different Foods? 352 Situation Factors: Proximity to Inputs 398
Diet 352 Situation Factors: Proximity to Markets 400
Nutrition and Hunger 354 Changing Situation Factors in Key Industries 403
Site Factors 408
KEY ISSUE 3 Contemporary Geographic Tools:
Honda Selects a Factory Location 409
Where Is Agriculture Distributed? 356

KEY ISSUE 3
Agriculture in Developing Regions 358
Agriculture in Developed Regions 366
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Where Does Industry Cause Pollution? 412
Protecting Farmland 369 Air Pollution 412
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
KEY ISSUE 4 Climate Change in the South Pacific 413
Solid Waste Pollution 414
Why Do Farmers Face Economic Difficulties? 374
Water Pollution 416
Challenges for Farmers in Developing Countries 374

KEY ISSUE 4
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Asian Carp and Chicago’s Economy 377
Challenges for Farmers in Developed Countries 378 Why Are Situation and Site Factors Changing? 418
Strategies to Increase the World’s Food Supply 380 Changes within Developed Regions 418
Sustainable Agriculture 386 Emerging Industrial Regions 420
Summary and Review 388 Renewed Attraction of Traditional Industrial
Regions 422
Key Terms 388
Summary and Review 425
Key Terms 425
CONTENTS XIII

12 Services and 13 Urban Patterns 458


Settlements 428
KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 1
Where Are Services Distributed? 431 Why Do Services Cluster Downtown? 461
Three Types of Services 431 CBD Land Uses 461
Rising and Falling Service Employment 432 Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:
Identifying Food Deserts 464

KEY ISSUE 2
KEY ISSUE 2
Where Are Consumer Services Distributed? 434
Where Are People Distributed within Urban Areas? 466
Central Place Theory 434
Models of Urban Structure 466
Hierarchy of Consumer Services 436
Geographic Applications of the Models 468
Market Area Analysis 438
Contemporary Geographic Tools:
Contemporary Geographic Tools: Market Segmentation: You Are Where You Live 469
Locating a New Supermarket 439
Applying the Models Outside North America 470
Sustainability and Inequality In Our Global Village:

KEY ISSUE 3
Unequal Spatial Impacts of the Severe Recession 441

KEY ISSUE 3 Why Are Urban Areas Expanding? 476


Suburban Expansion 476
Where Are Business Services Distributed? 442
Segregation in the Suburbs 482
Hierarchy of Business Services 442 Urban Transportation 484
Business Services in Developing Countries 444
Economic Base of Settlements 446
KEY ISSUE 4

KEY ISSUE 4
Why Do Cities Face Challenges? 490
Changing Urban Physical Geography 490
Why Do Services Cluster in Settlements? 448 Changing Urban Social Geography 492
Services in Rural Settlements 448 Urban Economic Geography Challenges 494
Urbanization 452
Summary and Review 496
Summary and Review 456 Key Terms 496
Key Terms 456
AFTERWORD AF–1
APPENDIX: MAP SCALE AND PROJECTIONS AP–1
KEY TERMS KT–1
TEXT, PHOTO, AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS CR–1
MAP INDEX MI–1
INDEX I–1
PREFACE

G eography is the study of where things are located on


Earth’s surface and the reasons for the location. The
word geography, invented by the ancient Greek scholar Era-
New Content
Issues of sustainability and resource management, deple-
tosthenes, is based on two Greek words. Geo means “Earth,” tion and misuse of Earth’s resources, and prospects for
and graph means “to write.” Geographers ask two simple a sustainable future are increasingly central to the un-
questions: where? and why? Where are people and activi- derstanding of the demographic, cultural, political, and
ties located across Earth’s surface? Why are they located in economic patterns, problems, and policies that human
particular places? The Cultural Landscape seeks to answer geographers study. Material that in previous editions ap-
these questions as they relate to our contemporary world. peared in a separate chapter at the end of the book has been
The book provides an accessible, in-depth, and up-to-date integrated into the discussion of other topics.
introduction to human geography for majors and non- t Chapter 1 (Basic Concepts) includes a new Key Issue that
majors alike. introduces the concept of sustainability.
t Chapter 2 is reframed as Population and Health. As the
New to the 11th Edition rate of population growth declines from its peak during
the second half of the twentieth century, population ge-
This edition brings substantial changes in both organiza- ography is increasingly concerned with the health of
tion and content. humans, not just their fertility and mortality. A new Key
Issue has been added that addresses regional variations
New Organization in medical conditions and practices.

A long-time strength of this book has been its clear, easy- t Chapter 3 (Migration) includes discussion of recent
to-use organization and outline. Electronic versions of the legal and political controversies over migration in the
books now coexist with traditional print format. Tradi- United States and Europe, including the border con-
tional textbooks must be formatted to facilitate reading on trol legislation enacted by the state of Arizona that was
tablets and computers, while not compromising the peda- upheld in part and voided in part by the U.S. Supreme
gogic strengths of traditional print formats. Organizational Court.
features from previous editions have been retained and t Chapter 4 (Folk and Popular Culture) includes a new key
considerably strengthened for this electronic age through issue concerning sustainability challenges faced by folk
the addition of several new features: and popular cultures, especially recycling of the mate-
t &
 BDIUXPQBHFTQSFBEJTOPXTFMGDPOUBJOFE"TBSFTVMU  rial artifacts of popular culture.
maps and photos appear next to where they are dis- t $
 IBQUFS  -BOHVBHFT  IBT CFFO SFPSHBOJ[FE UP IFMQ
cussed in the text. No more rifling through the book to students understand the worldwide distribution of lan-
find a map that has been discussed on one page but guages right off the bat.
doesn’t actually appear until several pages later. t $
 IBQUFS 3FMJHJPOT BMTPOPXCFHJOTXJUIBOPWFSWJFX
t 5
 XPQBHFTQSFBETOPXCFHJOXJUIB-FBSOJOH0VUDPNF of global patterns, before important features of diversity
for the material on that spread. The Learning Outcome among religions are introduced.
helps the reader focus on the most important point pre- t $
 IBQUFS &UIOJDJUJFT PQFOTXJUIBEFTDSJQUJPOPGUIF
sented on each spread. complex ethnic heritage of a prominent American –
t .PTUUXPQBHFTQSFBETOPXDPOUBJOBPause and Reflect President Obama. Most of the material related to na-
feature to stimulate further thought on the material pre- tionalities transferred to Chapter 8.
sented in the spread. t Chapter 8 (Political Geography) includes an expanded
 BDIDIBQUFSJTTUJMMPVUMJOFEBSPVOEGPVSKey Issues, as in
t & discussion of gerrymandering as a result of redistricting
previous editions. New to this edition is a Check-In fea- in accordance with the 2010 U.S. Census. The chapter
ture at the end of each of the four Key Issues. The Check- also addresses the events of Arab Spring.
In summarizes the principal points made regarding the t Chapter 9 (Development) contains a new Key Issue that
Key Issue that was just concluded. discusses the importance of energy in sustainable devel-
 IFFOEPGDIBQUFSTQSFBETTVNNBSJ[FBMMUIFKey Issues
t 5 opment. The chapter also discusses reasons underlying
and Learning Outcomes and presents a Thinking Geograph- the severe global recession that began in 2008, as well as
ically essay/discussion question as well as a Google Earth reasons poor economic conditions have lingered, espe-
activity specific to each Key Issue. cially in Europe.

XIV
PREFACE XV

t Chapter 10 (now called Food and Agriculture) includes a languages, fighting fiercely to protect their religions, and
new Key Issue that focuses on regional variations of food carving out distinctive economic roles. Local diversity even
preferences and needs. extends to addressing issues, such as the energy crisis, that
t Chapter 11 (now called Industry and Manufacturing) at first glance are considered global. For example, Israel is
has a new Key Issue that addresses the importance of re- working with the French carmaker Renault and the Silicon
ducing industrial pollution in promoting sustainable Valley company Project Better Place to encourage electric
development. vehicles by installing tens of thousands of recharging sta-
tions. Brazil has passed laws to require more use of biofu-
t Chapter 13 (Urban Patterns) includes results from the
els, produced from crops grown in Brazil and processed in
2010 U.S. Census.
factories there. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has
t $
 VSSFOU EBUB BOE JOGPSNBUJPO BSF JOUFHSBUFE JOUP BMM invested in a subway system as an alternative to motor ve-
text, tables, and maps from the 2010 U.S. Census, 2012 hicles, even though the country is one of the world’s lead-
Population Reference Bureau, Population Data and ing producers of petroleum.
other important sources.
t 5
 IJT UI FEJUJPO JT OPX TVQQPSUFE CZ
MasteringGeography™ with Pearson eText, the most Divisions within Geography
widely used and effective online homework, tutorial, Because geography is a broad subject, some specialization is
and assessment system for the sciences. Assignable inevitable. At the same time, one of geography’s strengths
media and activities include MapMaster™ interactive is its diversity of approaches. Rather than being forced to
maps, Encounter Human Geography Google Earth ex- adhere rigorously to established disciplinary laws, geogra-
plorations, geography videos, geoscience animations, phers can combine a variety of methods and approaches.
Thinking Spatially and Data Analysis activities on the This tradition stimulates innovative thinking, although
toughest topics in geography, end-of-chapter questions, students who are looking for a series of ironclad laws to
reading quizzes, and Test Bank questions. See page XVIII memorize may be disappointed.
for more detailed information.

Human versus Physical Geography


Human Geography as a
Geography is both a physical science and a social science.
Social Science When geography concentrates on the distribution of physical
features, such as climate, soil, and vegetation, it is a physical
The main purpose of this book is to introduce students to science. When it studies cultural features, such as language,
the study of human geography as a social science by em- industries, and cities, geography is a social science. This divi-
phasizing the relevance of geographic concepts to human sion is reflected in some colleges, where physical geography
problems. It is intended for use in college-level introduc- courses may carry natural science credit while human and
tory human or cultural geography courses, as well as the cultural geography courses carry social science credit.
equivalent advanced placement course in high school. At While this book is concerned with geography from a
present, human geography is the fastest-growing course in social science perspective, one of the distinctive features of
the AP curriculum. geography is its use of natural science concepts to help un-
A central theme in this book is a tension between two derstand human behavior. The distinction between physi-
important themes—globalization and cultural diversity. cal and human geography reflects differences in emphasis,
In many respects, we are living in a more unified world not an absolute separation.
economically, culturally, and environmentally. The ac-
tions of a particular corporation or country affect people
around the world. For example, geographers examine the
prospects for an energy crisis by relating the distributions
Topical versus Regional Approach
of energy production and consumption. Geographers Geographers face a choice between a topical approach and
find that the users of energy are located in places with a regional approach. The topical approach, which is used in
different social, economic, and political institutions than this book, starts by identifying a set of important cultural
are the producers of energy. The United States and Japan issues to be studied, such as population growth, political
consume far more energy than they produce, whereas disputes, and economic restructuring. Geographers using
Russia and Saudi Arabia produce far more energy than the topical approach examine the location of different as-
they consume. pects of the topic, the reasons for the observed pattern, and
This book argues that after a period when globalization the significance of the distribution.
of the economy and culture has been a paramount con- The alternative approach is regional. Regional geogra-
cern in geographic analysis, local diversity now demands phers select a portion of Earth and study the environment,
equal time. People are taking deliberate steps to retain dis- people, and activities within the area. The regional geogra-
tinctive cultural identities. They are preserving little-used phy approach is used in courses on Europe, Africa, Asia, and
XVI THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

other areas of the world. Although this book is organized t )


 PXEPQFPQMFFBSOBMJWJOHJOEJGGFSFOUQBSUTPGUIFXPSME 
by topics, geography students should be aware of the loca- Human survival depends on acquiring an adequate food
tion of places in the world. A separate index section lists supply. One of the most significant distinctions in the
the book’s maps by location. One indispensable aid in the world is whether people produce their food directly from
study of regions is an atlas, which can also be used to find the land or buy it with money earned by performing other
unfamiliar places that pop up in the news. types of work. Chapters 9 through 12 look at the three
main ways of earning a living: agriculture, manufactur-
ing, and services. Chapter 13 discusses cities, the centers
Descriptive versus Systematic Method for economic as well as cultural activities.
Whether using a topical or a regional approach, geogra-
phers can select either a descriptive or a systematic method. Suggestions for Use
Again, the distinction is one of emphasis, not an absolute
separation. The descriptive method emphasizes the collec- This book can be used in an introductory human or cultural
tion of a variety of details about a particular location. This geography course that extends over one semester, one quar-
method has been used primarily by regional geographers to ter, or two quarters. An instructor in a one-semester course
illustrate the uniqueness of a particular location on Earth’s could devote one week to each of the chapters, leaving time
surface. The systematic method emphasizes the identifica- for examinations. In a one-quarter course, the instructor
tion of several basic theories or techniques developed by might need to omit some of the book’s material. A course
geographers to explain the distribution of activities. with more of a cultural orientation could use Chapters 1
This book uses both the descriptive and systematic through 8. If the course has more of an economic orienta-
methods because total dependence on either approach is tion, then the appropriate chapters would be 1 through 3
unsatisfactory. An entirely descriptive book would contain and 8 through 13. A two-quarter course could be organized
a large collection of individual examples not organized into around the culturally oriented Chapters 1 through 8 dur-
a unified structure. A completely systematic approach suf- ing the first quarter and the more economically oriented
fers because some of the theories and techniques are so ab- Chapters 9 through 13 during the second quarter. Topics
stract that they lack meaning for the student. Geographers of particular interest to the instructor or students could be
who depend only on the systematic approach may have discussed for more than one week.
difficulty explaining important contemporary issues.

Outline of Main Topics Acknowledgments


The book discusses the following main topics: For a book that has been through many editions to maintain
its leadership position, stale and outdated material and meth-
 IBUCBTJDDPODFQUTEPHFPHSBQIFSTVTF Chapter 1 pro-
t 8
ods must be cleared out to make way for the fresh and con-
vides an introduction to ways that geographers think
temporary. It is all too easy for an author in the twenty-first
about the world. Geographers employ several concepts
century to rely on practices that brought success in the twen-
to describe the distribution of people and activities
tieth century. Strong proactive leadership is required from
across Earth, to explain reasons underlying the observed
the publisher to push an already strong book to loftier aspi-
distribution, and to understand the significance of the
rations. This leadership is especially critical during a period
arrangements.
when the teaching and learning environment is changing
t 8
 IFSFBSFQFPQMFMPDBUFEJOUIFXPSME 8IZEPTPNF much more rapidly than even in the late twentieth century.
places on Earth contain large numbers of people or at- A major reason for the long-term success of this book
tract newcomers while other places are sparsely inhab- has been the quality of leadership in geography at Pearson
ited? Chapters 2 and 3 examine the distribution and Education. The key members of Pearson’s hands-on revi-
growth of the world’s population, as well as the move- sion team are:
ment of people from one place to another.
t $
 ISJTUJBO#PUUJOH HFPHSBQIZFEJUPSBU1FBSTPO&EVDB-
t )PXBSFEJGGFSFOUDVMUVSBMHSPVQTEJTUSJCVUFE Chapters 4 tion, who has now led the team through four of my
through 8 analyze the distribution of different cultural book projects. Christian’s skills have made him ideally
traits and beliefs and the problems that result from those positioned to proactively bring together scientific books
spatial patterns. Important cultural traits discussed in with twenty-first century technology and pedagogy.
Chapter 4 include food, clothing, shelter, and leisure ac-
t "
 OUPO :BLPWMFW  HFPHSBQIZ QSPKFDU NBOBHFS BU 1FBSTPO
tivities. Chapters 5 through 7 examine three main ele-
Education, who has managed three book projects with me
ments of cultural identity: languages, religions, and eth-
now. Anton not only keeps impeccable control of what
nicities. Chapter 8 looks at political problems that arise
has to be done when, he has been more proactive than any
from cultural diversity. Geographers look for similari-
previous project manager in initiating many great ideas.
ties and differences in the cultural features at different
places, the reasons for their distribution, and the impor- t + POBUIBO $IFOFZ  FYFDVUJWF EFWFMPQNFOU FEJUPS BU
tance of these differences for world peace. Pearson Education, who has undertaken the detailed
PREFACE XVII

editorial development of the manuscript. Instead of pas- t 4UFGBOJF3BNTBZGPVOEHSFBUQIPUPT


sively editing line-by-line, Jonathan is proactive in adjust- t ,
 FWJO -FBS  TFOJPS QSPKFDU NBOBHFS BU *OUFSOBUJPOBM
ing the outdated material and suggesting fresh directions. Mapping, and his team, produced outstanding maps for
Prior to Christian, two individuals served as geography edi- this book. Back in the 1980s, when he was just getting
tors for most of the past three decades. Paul F. Corey, who started as a professional cartographer, Kevin produced
is now president of Science, Business and Technology at GIS-generated full-color maps for the second edition of
Pearson, guided development of the third, fourth, and fifth this book, the first time that either GIS or full color had
editions of this book. Dan Kaveney guided development of been used in a geography text—and a major reason for
the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth editions. launching this book’s success.
Because Pearson is the dominant publisher of college
I am grateful for the great work done on a variety of print
geography textbooks, the person in charge of geography
and digital ancillaries by Craig S. Campbell, Youngstown
wields considerable influence in shaping what is taught
State University; Matt Cartlidge, University of Nebraska–
in the nation’s geography curriculum. I will always value
Lincoln; John Conley, Saddleback College; Stephen Davis,
the sound judgment, outstanding vision, and friendship
University of Illinois–Chicago; Sarah Goggin, Cyprus Col-
of both Paul and Dan, and I am gratified that Christian has
lege; and Marc Healy, Elgin Community College.
quickly and successfully assumed the leadership position.
I would also like to extend a special thanks to all of my
Others at Pearson who have been especially helpful on
colleagues who have, over the years, offered a good deal of
this project include Bethany Sexton, geography editorial
feedback and constructive criticism. Colleagues who served
assistant; Gina Cheselka, geosciences production manag-
as reviewers as we prepared the 10th edition are Patricia
ing editor; Maureen McLaughlin, senior marketing man-
Boudinot, George Mason University; Henry Bullamore,
ager; Kristen Sanchez, assistant editor; Ziki Dekel and Tim
Frostburg State University; Caitie Finlayson, Florida State
Hainley, media producers; and others.
University; Jeff Gordon; Bowling Green State University;
In this age of outsourcing, Pearson works with many
Richard J. Grant, University of Miami; Marc Healy, Elgin
independent companies to create books. This edition has
Community College; Scott Hunt, Columbus State Com-
been the beneficiary of a top-notch team:
munity College; Jonathan Leib, Old Dominion University;
t ,
 FMMZ,FFMFS TFOJPSQSPKFDUNBOBHFSGPS)JHIFS&EVDB- Max Lu, Kansas State University; Debra Matthews, Boise
tion at Element LLC, directed the flow of production State University; Lashale Pugh, Youngstown State Univer-
work to the author. sity; Roger Seyla, University of Cincinnati; Suzanne Struve,
t ,
 JUUZ 8JMTPO IBOEMFE UIF DPQZFEJUJOH XPSL XJUI Blinn College; Scott Therkalsen, Grossmont College; and
sensitivity. David Wishart, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
THE TEACHING AND LEARNING PACKAGE

In addition to producing the text itself, the authors and


publisher have been pleased to work with a number of tal-
ented people to produce an excellent instructional package.
of class. Part One addresses “nuts-and-bolts” teaching
issues. Part Two explores being an effective teacher in
the field, supporting critical thinking with GIS and map-
ping technologies, engaging learners in large geography
For Teachers and Students classes, and promoting awareness of international per-
spectives and geographic issues.
MasteringGeography™ t Aspiring Academics: A Resource Book for Graduate
with Pearson eText Students and Early Career Faculty by Association of
American Geographers (0136048919) Drawing on
The Mastering platform is the most widely used and effec- several years of research, this set of essays is designed
tive online homework, tutorial, and assessment system for to help graduate students and early career faculty start
the sciences. It delivers self-paced tutorials that provide indi- their careers in geography and related social and envi-
vidualized coaching, focus on your course objectives, and are ronmental sciences. Aspiring Academics stresses the in-
responsive to each student’s progress. The Mastering system terdependence of teaching, research, and service—and
helps teachers maximize class time with customizable, easy- the importance of achieving a healthy balance of profes-
to-assign, and automatically graded assessments that motivate sional and personal life—while doing faculty work. Each
students to learn outside class and arrive prepared for lecture. chapter provides accessible, forward-looking advice on
MasteringGeography offers: topics that often cause the most stress in the first years
of a teaching appointment.
t A
 ssignable activities that include MapMaster™ Inter-
active Map activities, Encounter Human Geography Google t Television for the Environment Earth Report Geography
Earth Explorations, Video activities, Geoscience Anima- Videos on DVD (0321662989) This three-DVD set helps
tion activities, Map Projection activities, Thinking Spa- students visualize how human decisions and behavior
tially and Data Analysis activities on the toughest topics have affected the environment and how individuals
in geography, end-of-chapter questions and exercises, are taking steps toward recovery. With topics ranging
reading quizzes, and Test Bank questions. from the poor land management promoting the devas-
t Student Study Area with MapMaster™ interactive tation of river systems in Central America, to the strug-
maps, videos, Geoscience Animations, web links, vid- gles for electricity in China and Africa, these 13 videos
eos, glossary flashcards, “In the News” RSS feeds, chap- from Television for the Environment’s global Earth Re-
ter quizzes, an optional Pearson eText that includes ver- port series recognize the efforts of individuals around the
sions for iPad and Android devices, and more. world to unite and protect the planet.
t Television for the Environment Life World Regional
Pearson eText gives students access to the text whenever
Geography Videos on DVD (013159348X) From the
and wherever they can access the Internet. The eText pages
Television for the Environment’s global Life series, this
look exactly like the printed text, and include powerful in-
two-DVD set brings globalization and the developing
teractive and customization functions, and links to media.
world to the attention of any world regional geogra-
t Practicing Geography: Careers for Enhancing Soci- phy course. These 10 full-length video programs high-
ety and the Environment by Association of American light matters such as the growing number of homeless
Geographers (0321811151) This book examines career children in Russia, the lives of immigrants living in the
opportunities for geographers and geospatial profession- United States trying to aid family still living in their na-
als in business, government, nonprofit, and educational tive countries, and the European conflict between com-
sectors. A diverse group of academic and industry profes- mercial interests and environmental concerns.
sionals share insights on career planning, networking,
t Television for the Environment Life Human Geography
transitioning between employment sectors, and balanc-
Videos on DVD (0132416565) This three-DVD set is de-
ing work and home life. The book illustrates the value of
signed to enhance any human geography course. These
geographic expertise and technologies through engag-
DVDs include 14 full-length video programs from Tele-
ing profiles and case studies of geographers at work.
vision for the Environment’s global Life series, covering
t Teaching College Geography: A Practical Guide for a wide array of issues affecting people and places in the
Graduate Students and Early Career Faculty by Asso- contemporary world, including the serious health risks
ciation of American Geographers (0136054471) This of pregnant women in Bangladesh, the social inequali-
two-part resource provides a starting point for becoming ties of the “untouchables” in the Hindu caste system,
an effective geography teacher from the very first day and Ghana’s struggle to compete in a global market.
XVIII
THE TEACHING AND LEARNING PACKAGE XIX

For Teachers For Students


t Instructor Resource Manual Download (0321841158) t Goode’s World Atlas, 22nd Edition (0321652002) Goode’s
The Instructor Resource Manual written by John Conley of World Atlas has been the world’s premiere educational
Saddleback College, follows the new organization of the atlas since 1923—and for good reason. It features more
main text. Each chapter of the Instructor Resource Man- than 250 pages of maps, from definitive physical and
ual opens with a specific introduction highlighting core political maps to important thematic maps that illus-
learning objectives presented in the specific chapter. The trate the spatial aspects of many important topics. The
Instructor Resource Manual includes Icebreakers to start 22nd edition includes 160 pages of new, digitally pro-
classroom discussion, Challenges to Comprehension, duced reference maps, as well as new thematic maps
Review/Reflection Questions, answers to the Pause and on global climate change, sea level rise, CO2 emissions,
Reflect and Thinking Geographically questions found polar ice fluctuations, deforestation, extreme weather
in the text, and Additional Resources to examine during events, infectious diseases, water resources, and energy
classroom sessions or to assign to students. production.
t TestGen/Test Bank (0321841166) TestGen is a comput- t Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming by
erized test generator that lets teachers view and edit Test Michael Mann and Lee R. Kump (0136044352) This
Bank questions, transfer questions to tests, and print the text is for any science or social science course in need of
test in a variety of customized formats. Authored by Ste- a basic understanding of Intergovernmental Panel on
phen Davis of the University of Illinois at Chicago, this Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Periodic reports from
Test Bank includes approximately 1,000 multiple-choice, the IPCC evaluate the risk of climate change brought
true/false, and short-answer/essay questions. Questions on by humans. But the sheer volume of scientific data
are correlated against the revised U.S. National Geogra- remains inscrutable to the general public, particularly
phy Standards, chapter-specific learning outcomes, and to those who may still question the validity of climate
Bloom’s Taxonomy to help teachers better map the assess- change. In just over 200 pages, this practical text pres-
ments against both broad and specific teaching and learn- ents and expands upon the essential findings in a visu-
ing objectives. The Test Bank is also available in Microsoft ally stunning and undeniably powerful way to the lay
Word® and can be imported into Blackboard. reader. Scientific findings that provide validity to the
implications of climate change are presented in clear-
t Instructor Resource DVD (032184114X) This DVD pro-
cut graphic elements, striking images, and understand-
vides everything teachers need where they want it. The
able analogies.
Instructor Resource DVD helps make teachers more ef-
fective by saving them time and effort. All digital re-
sources can be found in one well-organized, easy-to-ac- Pearson’s Encounter Series
cess place. This DVD includes: Pearson’s Encounter series provides rich, interactive ex-
plorations of geoscience concepts through Google
t All textbook images as JPEGs, PDFs, and Power-
Earth™ activities, exploring a range of topics in regional,
Point™ presentations
human, and physical geography. For those who do not
t Pre-authored Lecture Outline PowerPoint™ presen- use MasteringGeography, all chapter explorations are
tations, which outline the concepts of each chap- available in print workbooks as well as in online quiz-
ter with embedded art and can be customized to fit zes, at www.mygeoscienceplace.com, accommodating
teachers’ lecture requirements different classroom needs. Each exploration consists of a
worksheet, online quizzes, and a corresponding Google
t CRS “Clicker” Questions in PowerPoint™ format,
Earth™ KMZ file:
which correlate to the U.S. National Geography
Standards, chapter-specific learning outcomes, and t E
 ncounter Human Geography Workbook and Website
Bloom’s Taxonomy by Jess C. Porter (0321682203)
t Encounter World Regional Geography Workbook and
t The TestGen software, Test Bank questions, and an-
Website by Jess C. Porter (0321681754)
swers for both Macs and PCs
t E
 ncounter Physical Geography Workbook and Website
t Electronic files of the Instructor Resource Manual and by Jess C. Porter and Stephen O’Connell (0321672526)
Test Bank
t Encounter Geosystems Workbook and Website by
This Instructor Resource Center content is also available Charlie Thomsen (0321636996)
completely online via the Instructor Resources section of t E
 ncounter Earth Workbook and Website by Steve Kluge
MasteringGeography and www.pearsonhighered.com/irc. (0321581296)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

D r. James M. Rubenstein received his B.A. from the Uni-


versity of Chicago in 1970, M.Sc. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science in 1971, and Ph.D.
from Johns Hopkins University in 1975. He is Professor of
Geography at Miami University, where he teaches urban and
human geography. Dr. Rubenstein also conducts research in
the automotive industry and has published three books on
the subject—The Changing U.S. Auto Industry: A Geographical
Analysis (Routledge); Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and
Change in the U.S. Auto Industry (The Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press); and Who Really Made Your Car? Restructuring and
Geographic Change in the Auto Industry (W.E. Upjohn Insti-
tute, with Thomas Klier). Dr. Rubenstein is also the author of
Contemporary Human Geography and coauthor of Introduction
to Contemporary Geography, briefer visual texts produced by
Pearson in partnership with Dorling Kindersley. He is a semi-
amateur/semiprofessional painter and displays his work at
galleries in Maryland and Ohio. Winston, a lab/husky mix
with one brown eye and one blue eye, takes Dr. Rubenstein
for long walks in the woods every day.

XX
ABOUT OUR SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES

Pearson recognizes the environmental challenges facing this planet, as well as acknowledges
our responsibility in making a difference. This book has been carefully crafted to minimize
environmental impact. The binding, cover, and paper come from facilities that minimize
waste, energy consumption, and the use of harmful chemicals. Pearson closes the loop by
recycling every out-of-date text returned to our warehouse.
Along with developing and exploring digital solutions to our market’s needs, Pearson
has a strong commitment to achieving carbon-neutrality. As of 2009, Pearson became the
first carbon- and climate-neutral publishing company. Since then, Pearson remains strongly
committed to measuring, reducing, and offsetting our carbon footprint.
The future holds great promise for reducing our impact on Earth’s environment, and
Pearson is proud to be leading the way. We strive to publish the best books with the most
up-to-date and accurate content, and to do so in ways that minimize our impact on Earth.
To learn more about our initiatives, please visit www.pearson.com/responsibility.

XXI
A proven path to learning
The text’s consistent chapter structure and supporting pedagogy provides a learning path that identifies
and reinforces important issues and outcomes.
Key Issues form a learning path
Key Issues highlight the four main points around which each chapter is organized. At
the end of each Key Issue section, a Check-In summarizes the main focus of the section.

KEY ISSUE 4 Active learning reinforces Key Issues


NEW! Pause and Reflect Questions are integrated
Why Do Some Regions NEW! Learning
Outcomes in
throughout the chapters, giving students a chance to stop
and check their understanding of the reading.
Face Health Threats? each Key Issue
section identify
■ Epidemiologic Transition Pause and Reflect 2.4.4
the skills and
Why do men have lower life expectancies than
■ Infectious Diseases knowledge women in most countries?
students will
■ Health Care gain from each
section. Pause and Reflect 2.4.5
Learning Outcome 2.4.1 Why might levels of hospital beds and physicians
Summarize the four stages of the epidemiologic be lower in North America than in other developed
transition. countries?

CHECK IN: KEY ISSUE 4 Check Ins


Why do some regions face health threats?
at the end of End-of-chapter questions:
✓ The epidemiologic transition has four stages of


distinctive diseases.
A resurgence of infectious diseases may signal a
each section t Thinking Geographically are application-oriented
possible stage 5 of the epidemiologic transition.
summarize the sections that allow students to explore issues more
✓ The provision of health care varies sharply
between developed and developing countries. main points. intensively.
t NEW! Engaging end-of-chapter features include
exercises that explore Key Issues using Google
KEY ISSUE 4 Earth.

Why Do Regions Face Health Threats? THINKING GEOGRAPHICALLY 2.4: Health-care indicators for the
United States do not always match those of other developed
The epidemiologic transition is a change in a society’s distinctive countries. What reasons might explain these differences?
types of diseases. Health care is better in developed countries, but
GOOGLE EARTH 2.4: Several hundred thousand died, some from in-
even they are threatened by infectious diseases diffused through NEW! Reviews fectious diseases, after an earthquake hit Haiti January 12, 2010,
modern means of transportation.
of Key Issues the date this Google
LEARNING OUTCOME 2.4.1: Summarize the four stages of the epi- Earth image was taken.
demiologic transition. close out each The roof of the cathe-
t Stage 1 was characterized by pestilence and famine, stage 2 by chapter with a dral in the capital Port
pandemics, and stages 3 and 4 by degenerative diseases. au Prince collapsed.
recap of Learning What other evidence
LEARNING OUTCOME 2.4.2: Summarize the reasons for a stage 4 Outcomes that of the earthquake can
and possible stage 5 of the epidemiologic transition. be seen in images from
summarize January 2010?
t Evolution, poverty, and increased connections may influence
the resurgence of infectious diseases. and reinforce
LEARNING OUTCOME 2.4.3: Describe the diffusion of AIDS. significant
LEARNING OUTCOME 2.4.4: Understand reasons for variations in concepts.
health care between developed and developing countries.
t Health care varies widely around the world because develop-
ing countries generally lack resources to provide the same
level of health care as developed countries.
LEARNING OUTCOME 2.4.5: Understand reasons for variations in
health between developed and developing countries.

XXII
Explore human geography in a cultural landscape
How can teachers hold the attention of today’s students? By using stories and examples that emphasize
the relevance of geographic concepts tools, technologies, and to universal human concerns such as
health, equality, and sustainability.
SUSTAINABILITY AND INEQUALITY IN OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE
Ethnic Cleansing and Drought
More than 2 million Somalis—one-
fourth of the country’s population—
are classified as refugees or internally
displaced persons. As elsewhere in

NEW! Sustainability and Inequality in Our sub-Saharan Africa, continued fight-


ing among ethnic groups and the
Global Village features in each chapter discuss absence of a strong national govern-
ment able to maintain order have
current social, economic, and environmental topics contributed to the large number of
refugees.
relevant to the chapter themes. Adding to the woes of the Somali
people, the worst drought in 60 years
hit the country in 2010 and 2011,
especially in the south (Figure 7-48).
It is impossible to count the number
of Somalis forced to migrate because
of famine rather than civil war; both
factors probably affect most Somalis.
Because of the civil war, much of
the food and water sent by inter-
Contemporary Geographic Tools offer readers a wealth national relief organizations could
FIGURE 7-48 SOMALIA Somali victims of fighting and famine line up for food and medical
assistance in 2011.
not get through to the people in
of representations and perspectives to better understand need. Improved weather in 2012 International organizations distrib- a renewal of fighting or a bit less
issues, using geographic methods and online tools and resulted in a larger harvest, and
more supplies were reaching people.
uted seeds and dug irrigation ca-
nals to help in the longer term, but
rainfall could push the country back
into famine.
technologies such as geographic information systems, aerial
photography, remote sensing, and Google Earth.
SUSTAINABILITY AND INEQUALITY IN OUR GLOBAL VILLAGE

CONTEMPORARY GEOGRAPHIC TOOLS Climate Change in the South Pacific


Claiming Ellis Island One consequence of global warming
is a rise in the level of the oceans.
world’s most isolated countries (Fig-
ure 11-33). Despite its extreme isola-
made of coral reefs. A coral is a small
sedentary marine animal that has a
The large percentage of the world’s tion, global forces threaten Kiribati’s horny or calcareous skeleton. Cor-
Twelve million immigrants to the part of their state, not New York. The of Environmental Protection (NJDEP)
population—including one-half of existence. Rising sea levels due to als form colonies, and the skeletons
United States between 1892 and 1954 claim was partly a matter of pride officials using Geographic Informa-
Americans—who live near the sea global warming threaten Kiribati build up to form coral reefs. Coral is
were processed at Ellis Island, situated on the part of New Jersey officials tion System (GIS). NJDEP officials
face increased threat of flooding. The because the entire country is within very fragile. Humans are attracted to
in New York Harbor (Figure 3-33). to stand up to their more glamorous scanned into an image file an 1857
threat is especially severe for island a few meters of sea level. Two of coral for its beauty and the diversity
Incorporated as part of the Statue of neighbor. After all, Ellis Island was U.S. coast map that was considered
countries in the Pacific Ocean; they Kiribati’s islands—Tebua Tarawa and of species it supports, but handling
Liberty National Monument in 1965, only 400 meters (1,300 feet) from the to be the most reliable map from that
could be wiped off the map entirely. Abanuea—have already disappeared. coral can kill it. The threat of global
Ellis Island was restored and reopened New Jersey shoreline, yet tourists— era. The image file of the old map
Kiribati is a collection of approxi- Kiribati and other Pacific island warming to coral is especially severe:
in 1990 as a museum of immigration. like immigrants a century ago—are was brought into ArcView, and then
mately 32 small islands, one of the microstates are atolls—that is, islands Coral stays alive in only a narrow
Before building the immigration cen- transported by ferry to Lower Man- the low waterline shown on the 1857
ter, the U.S. government used Ellis hattan more than a mile away. More map was edited and depicted using range of ocean temperatures, be-
Island as a fort and powder magazine practically, the sales tax collected by a series of dots. The perimeter of the tween 23°C and 25°C (between 73°F
beginning in 1808. the Ellis Island museum gift shop current island was mapped using and 77°F), so global warming threat-
An 1834 agreement approved by was going to New York rather than global positioning system (GPS) ens the ecology of Kiribati, even if it
the U.S. Congress gave Ellis Island to New Jersey. surveying. remains above sea level.
to New York State and gave the sub- After decades of dispute, New Jer- After ruling in favor of New Kiribati has an emergency re-
merged lands surrounding the island sey took the case to the U.S. Supreme Jersey’s claim, the Supreme Court dir- sponse to rising sea levels. The gov-
to New Jersey. When the agreement Court. In 1998, the Supreme Court ected the NJDEP to delineate the pre- ernment has negotiated with Fiji to
was signed, Ellis Island was only 1.1 ruled 6–3 that New York owned the cise boundary between the two states, purchase 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres)
hectares (2.75 acres), but beginning original island but that New Jersey again using GIS. Overlaying the 1857 of land on the island of Vanua Levu to
in the 1890s, the U.S. government owned the rest. New York’s jurisdic- low waterline onto the current map relocate people from Kiribati someday.
enlarged the island, eventually to tion was set as the low waterline of identified New York’s territory, and
10.6 hectares (27.5 acres). the original island. Critical evidence the rest of the current island was det- FIGURE 11-33 KIRIBATI Global warming
New Jersey state officials claimed in the decision was a series of maps ermined to belong to New Jersey. may cause the oceans to rise, submerging small
that the 10.6-hectare Ellis Island was prepared by New Jersey Department island countries such as Kiribati.

FIGURE 3-33 ELLIS ISLAND Ellis Island is in the foreground, Jersey City, New Jersey, is to the left, and
Manhattan, New York is to the rear.

XXIII
Modular design:
The ultimate in flexibility and effectiveness
Exceptionally clear organization and a modular approach mean ease of use for both students and teachers.

NEW! Modular organization simplifies lesson planning for teachers, studying for students. The Eleventh Edition is Updated coverage
more tightly organized into modules that work as a unit, providing flexibility for students and teachers. and recent data on
the most current
human geography
30 THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
issues includes:

KEY ISSUE 4
THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY t &YQBOEFEFNQIBTJT
According to the United Nations, sustainability rests on on resource issues
three pillars: environment, economy, and society. The UN
report Our Common Future is a landmark work in recogniz-
and sustainability
Why Are Some ing sustainability as a combination of natural and human integrated
elements. The report, released in 1987, is frequently called throughout
Human Actions Not the Brundtland Report, named for the chair of the World
Commission on Environment and Development, Gro t %FEJDBUFEDPWFSBHF
Sustainable? Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway.
Sustainability requires curtailing the use of nonrenew-
of medical and health
■ Sustainability and Resources able resources and limiting the use of renewable resources geography and
to the level at which the environment can continue to
■ Sustainability and Human– supply them indefinitely. To be sustainable, the amount of
the challenges and
Environment Relationships timber cut down in a forest, for example, or the number of threats of access
fish removed from a body of water must remain at a level
that does not reduce future supplies. t 3FWJTFEEJTDVTTJPO
Learning Outcome 1.4.1 The Brundtland Report argues that sustainability can of food agriculture
Describe the three pillars of sustainability. be achieved only by bringing together environmental pro-
tection, economic growth, and social equity (Figure 1-38). incorporating critical
Geography is distinctive because it encompasses both so- The report is optimistic about the possibility of promoting issues such as
cial science (human geography) and natural science (phys- environmental protection at the same time as economic
ical geography). This book focuses on human geogra- growth and social equity.
scarcity of food and
phy but doesn’t forget that humans are interrelated with water resources
Earth’s atmosphere, land, water, and vegetation, as well as THE ENVIRONMENT PILLAR. The sustainable use and
with its other living creatures. management of Earth’s natural resources to meet human t (FOEFSBOEXPNFOT
needs such as food, medicine, and recreation is conservation.
From the perspective of human geography, nature of-
Renewable resources such as trees and wildlife are conserved
issues
fers a large menu of resources available for people to use.
A resource is a substance in the environment that is use- if they are consumed at a less rapid rate than they can be t 1PMJUJDBMHFPHSBQIZ
ful to people, economically and technologically feasible replaced. Nonrenewable resources such as petroleum and
to access, and socially acceptable to use. A substance is coal are conserved if we use less today in order to maintain
coverage capturing
merely part of nature until a society has a use for it. Food, more for future generations (Figure 1-38, left). the results of the
water, minerals, soil, plants, and animals are examples of Conservation differs from preservation, which is the
maintenance of resources in their present condition, with
2012 U.S. elections
resources.
as little human impact as possible. Preservation takes the as well as a number
view that the value of nature does not derive from human
needs and interests but from the fact that every plant and
of recent Supreme
Sustainability and Resources animal living on Earth has a right to exist and should be Court decisions
Earth’s resources are divided between those that are renew- preserved, regardless of the cost. Preservation does not (e.g., redistricting/
able and those that are not: regard nature as a resource for human use. In contrast,
conservation is compatible with development but only gerrymandering, and
t A renewable resource is produced in nature more rap-
idly than it is consumed by humans. migration) and the
t A nonrenewable resource is produced in nature more implications of other
slowly than it is consumed by humans. world events
Geographers observe two major misuses of resources: Social t *OUFHSBUFEEJTDVTTJPO
t Humans deplete nonrenewable resources, such as pe-
troleum, natural gas, and coal. of development and
Bearable Equitable
t Humans destroy otherwise renewable resources through inequality reflecting
pollution of air, water, and soil. Sustainable
the state of the world
The use of Earth’s renewable and nonrenewable natural Environment Economic
resources in ways that ensure resource availability in the Viable
economy and the
future is sustainability. Efforts to recycle metals, paper, widening class gap
and plastic, develop less polluting industrial processes,
and protect farmland from suburban sprawl are all ex- FIGURE 1-37 THREE PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY The UN’s
t /FXBQQMJDBUJPOTPG
amples of practices that contribute to a more sustainable Brundtland Report considers sustainability to be a combination of cultural phenomena,
future. environmental protection, economic development, and social equity.
from professional
sports and music to
social networking

XXIV
Contemporary photos and maps
bring human geography to life
Restyled and modernized maps use the latest census and population data to
SE Texas and Louisiana enhance the program’s overall effectiveness. Key maps within MapMaster™ in
1:10,000,000
MasteringGeography™ connect the text directly to online media and assessment.

2008

0 10 20 Miles
0 10 20 Kilometers

Houston Metro Area


1:1,000,000

2011

Facebook users
0 2.5 5 Miles
(millions)
0 2.5 5 Kilometers 100 and above
10 –99
0 2,000 4,000 Miles
1–9
Central Houston 0 2,000 4,000 Kilometers
Below 1
1:100,000
no data

FIGURE 4-34 DIFFUSION OF FACEBOOK Facebook users in (top) 2008


and (bottom) 2011.

0 1000 2000 Feet


0 1000 2000 Meters

Updated with more than 40% new photos


Minute Maid Park
1:10,000

0 100 200 Feet


0 100 200 Meters

FIGURE 1-8 MAP SCALE The four images show southeast Texas (first),
the city of Houston (second), downtown Houston (third), and Minute Maid Park
(fourth). The map of southeastern Texas has a fractional scale of 1:10,000,000.
Expressed as a written statement, 1 inch on the map represents 10 million
inches (about 158 miles) on the ground. Look what happens to the scale on the
other three maps. As the area covered gets smaller, the maps get more detailed, FIGURE 4-38 PROTESTORS SHARING INFORMATION DURING ARAB
and 1 inch on the map represents smaller distances. SPRING Two Egyptian protesters took photographs with their mobile phones
when Egyptian riot police fired tear gas during an Arab Spring protest in 2011.

XXV
www.masteringgeography.com

The Mastering online homework, tutorial, and assessment system helps teachers focus on their course
objectives by delivering self-paced tutorials that provide students with individualized coaching and
respond to each student’s progress.

Tools for improving geographic literacy and exploring Earth’s dynamic landscape

is a powerful interactive map


tool that presents assignable layered thematic
and place name interactive maps at world
and regional scales for students to test their
geographic literacy and spatial reasoning skills,
and explore the modern geographer’s tools.

MapMaster Layered Thematic


Interactive Map Activities act as a mini-
GIS tool, allowing students to layer various
thematic maps to analyze spatial patterns and
data at regional and global scales and answer
multiple-choice and short-answer questions
organized by region and theme.
NEW! Layered Thematic Map Features
t OFXNBQMBZFST
t ;PPNBOEBOOPUBUJPOGVODUJPOBMJUJFT
t "MMNBQTVQEBUFEXJUIEBUBGSPNUIF
U.S. Census, as well as current data from
the United Nations, and the Population
Reference Bureau

MapMaster Place Name Interactive Map


Activities have students identify place names
of political and physical features at regional
and global scales, explore select recent country
data from the CIA World Factbook, and answer
associated assessment questions.

XXVI
Help students develop a sense of place and spatial reasoning skills

Encounter Activities provide rich, interactive


explorations of geography concepts using the dynamic
features of Google Earth™ to visualize and explore Earth’s
landscape. Dynamic assessment includes questions related
to core human geography concepts. All explorations include
DPSSFTQPOEJOH(PPHMF&BSUI,.;NFEJBmMFT BOERVFTUJPOT
include hints and specific wrong-answer feedback to help
coach students towards mastery of the concepts.

Geography videos provide students a sense of place and allow them to explore a
range of locations and topics. Covering issues of economy, development, globalization,
climate and climate change, culture, etc., there are 10 multiple choice questions for
each video. These video activities allow teachers to test students’ understanding and
application of concepts, and offer hints and wrong-answer feedback.

Thinking Spatially and Data Analysis Activities help students


master the toughest concepts to develop spatial reasoning and
critical thinking skills by identifying and labeling features from maps,
illustrations, graphs, and charts. Students then examine related
data sets, answering multiple-choice and increasingly higher order
conceptual questions, which include hints and specific wrong-
answer feedback.

Student Resources in
MasteringGeography
t .BQ.BTUFS™ interactive
maps
t 1SBDUJDFDIBQUFSRVJ[[FT
t (FPHSBQIZWJEFPT
t i*OUIF/FXTw344GFFET
t (MPTTBSZnBTIDBSET
t 0QUJPOBM1FBSTPOF5FYUBOE
more
Callouts to
MasteringGeography appear
at the end of each chapter to
direct students to extend their
learning beyond the textbook.

XXVII
www.masteringgeography.com

With the Mastering gradebook and diagnostics, you’ll be better informed about your students’ progress
than ever before. Mastering captures the step-by-step work of every student—including wrong answers
submitted, hints requested, and time taken at every step of every problem—all providing unique insight
into the most common misconceptions of your class.

Quickly monitor and display student results

The Gradebook
records all scores for
automatically graded
assignments. Shades
of red highlight
struggling students
and challenging
assignments.

Diagnostics provide unique


insight into class and student
performance. With a single click,
charts summarize the most difficult
problems, vulnerable students, grade
distribution, and score improvement
over the duration of the course.

With a single click, Individual


Student Performance
Data provides at-a-glance
statistics into each individual
student’s performance,
including time spent on the
problem, number of hints
opened, and number of wrong
and correct answers submitted.

XXVIII
Quickly measure student performance against learning outcomes

Learning Outcomes
MasteringGeography provides quick and easy access
to information on student performance against your
learning outcomes and makes it easy to share those
results.
t 2VJDLMZBEEZPVSPXOMFBSOJOHPVUDPNFT PS
use publisher-provided ones, to track student
performance and report it to your administration.
t 7JFXDMBTTBOEJOEJWJEVBMTUVEFOUQFSGPSNBODF
against specific learning outcomes.
t &GGPSUMFTTMZFYQPSUSFTVMUTUPBTQSFBETIFFUUIBUZPV
can further customize and/or share with your chair,
dean, administrator, and/or accreditation board.

Easy to make your own


Customize publisher-provided problems or quickly add your own. MasteringGeography makes it easy to edit any questions or
answers, import your own questions, and quickly add images, links, and files to further enhance the student experience.
Upload your own video and audio files from your hard drive to share with students, as well as record video from your
computer’s webcam directly into MasteringGeography—no plug-ins required. Students can download video and audio files
to their local computer or launch them in Mastering to view the content.

NEW! The Pearson eText app is a great companion to


Pearson’s eText browser-based book reader. It allows existing
subscribers who view their Pearson eText titles on a Mac or PC
to additionally access their titles in a bookshelf on the iPad or
Android Tablets either online or via download.
Pearson eText gives students access to The Cultural
Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography,
11th Edition whenever and wherever they can access the
Internet. The eText pages look exactly like the printed text,
and include powerful interactive and customization functions.
Users can create notes, highlight text in different colors, create
bookmarks, zoom, click hyperlinked words and phrases to view
definitions, and view as a single page or as two pages. Pearson
eText also links students to associated media files, enabling
them to view an animation as they read the text, and offers a
full-text search and the ability to save and export notes. The
Pearson eText also includes embedded URLs in the chapter text
with active links to the Internet.

XXIX
This page intentionally left blank
The Cultural
Landscape
Chapter

1 Basic Concepts

Why are these people driving around your neighborhood with a Where were your North Face clothes made? Page 21
camera on their roof? Page 12

KEY ISSUE 1 KEY ISSUE 2


How Do Why Is Each Point
Geographers On Earth Unique?
Describe Where
Things Are?

Mapping then and now p. 5 My place in the world p. 14


Mapmaking has come a long way, from sticks and shells to sat- Where am I? The tiny spot on Earth that each of us inhabits is a
ellite mashups. Why are maps so important to geographers? special place to us—and for good reason.

2
Geographers see people everywhere, in-
cluding this Muslim clergyman in Afghani-
The Netherlands, p. 36
Boston, p. 16
stan, Twittering on his smart phone, being
Paris, p. 25
Longest U.S. Place Name, p. 14
France, p. 26
pulled in opposite directions by two factors—
The South, p. 17
globalization and local diversity. Modern com-
Mississippi, p. 33 Baltimore, p.19
Shanghai, p. 15
Houston, p. 8
munications and technology foster globaliza-
Everglades, p. 37 Marshall Islands, p. 5
New Orleans, p. 7 tion, pulling people into greater cultural and
Cyprus, p. 31
economic interaction with others. At the same
time, people are searching for more ways to
express their unique cultural traditions and
economic practices.

KEY ISSUE 3 KEY ISSUE 4


Why Are Different Why Are Some
Places Similar? Human Actions
Not Sustainable?
CHINA DUBAI

A world of similarities Caring for Earth p. 31


and differences p. 21 Earth has been entrusted to us. Will we leave it in better shape
than we inherited it—or in worse shape?
We are bound together with the rest of the world—whether we
like it or not. How do we fit into a global economy and society?

3
Introducing History and geography differ in one especially important
manner: A historian cannot enter a time machine to study
other eras firsthand; however, a geographer can enter an au-

Basic Concepts tomobile or airplane to study Earth’s surface. This ability


to reach other places lends excitement to the discipline of
geography—and geographic training raises the understand-
What do you expect from this geography ing of other spaces to a level above that of casual sightseeing.
To introduce human geography, we concentrate on two
course? You may think that geography in- main features of human behavior—culture and economy.
volves memorizing lists of countries and The first half of the book explains why the most important
capitals. Perhaps you associate geography cultural features, such as major languages, religions, and
ethnicities, are arranged as they are across Earth. The sec-
with photographic essays of exotic places ond half of the book looks at the locations of the most im-
in popular magazines. Contemporary ge- portant economic activities, including agriculture, manu-
ography is the scientific study of where facturing, and services.
This chapter introduces basic concepts that geographers
people and activities are found across employ to address their “where” and “why” questions.
Earth’s surface and the reasons why they Many of these concepts are words commonly employed in
are found there. English but given particular meaning by geographers:
t KEY ISSUE 1 looks at geography’s most important
In his framework of all scientific knowledge, the German tool—mapping. Accurate maps are constructed from
philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) compared geog- satellite imagery, such as Figures 1-1 and 1-2.
raphy and history:
t KEY ISSUE 2 addresses the first of two principal “why”
questions. Geographers want to know why each point
on Earth is in some ways unique. For example, why
Geographers . . . Historians . . .
does Figure 1-2 have some bright points and some dark
identify the location of identify the dates of important areas?
important places and explain events and explain why human
why human activities are activities follow one another t KEY ISSUE 3 looks at why different places on Earth
located beside one another. chronologically. have similar features. For example, what common fea-
tures distinguish the bright areas in Figure 1-2?
ask where and why. ask when and why.

organize material spatially. organize material


t KEY ISSUE 4 discusses sustainability. Distinctive to
geography is the importance given to relationships be-
chronologically.
tween human activities and the physical environment.
recognize that an action at recognize that an action at For example, what are the relationships between the
one point on Earth can result one point in time can result tan areas in Figure 1-1 and the dark areas in Figure 1-2?
from something happening from past actions that can in This book focuses on human geography, but it doesn’t
at another point, which can turn affect future ones. forget that we also need to understand how humans in-
consequently affect conditions teract with Earth’s atmosphere, water, vegetation, and
elsewhere. other living creatures.

FIGURE 1-1 SATELLITE IMAGE:


DAYTIME The composite image was
assembled by the Geosphere Project of Santa
Monica, California. Thousands of images
were recorded over a 10-month period by
satellites of the National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration. The images were
then electronically assembled, much like a
jigsaw puzzle.

44
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least


the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,


some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR


MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO


This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second


showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
“We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I


came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE


FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE


BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE


LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI


Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK


BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT


SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA


To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN

You might also like