HERODOTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS - The Revenge of Geography - page 34

all, of course, there is the history of the Jews, which goes against the entire logic of the
geographical continuity of major religions (particularly of Hinduism and Buddhism), and
which McNeill therefore takes pains to include: the utter destruction of the Jewish com-
munity in Judea, the consequence of the crushing of first- and second-century A.D . revolts
by the Romans, did not end Judaism, which went on improbably to evolve and flourish in
scattered cities of the western Diaspora, a two-thousand-year-old story averse to the dic-
tates of geography, which shows once again how ideas and human agency matter as much
as physical terrain. 14
And yet, too, there is the story of Europe, reaching back to the dawn of human history, a
story very much about the primacy of geography. As McNeill points out, Western Europe
had distinct geographical advantages which developments in technology during the so-
called Dark Ages brought into play: wide and fertile plains, an indented coastline that
allowed for many good natural harbors, navigable rivers flowing northward across these
plains and extending the reach of commerce to a greater extent than in the Mediterranean
region, and an abundance of timber and metals. 15 Europe's was also a harsh, cold, and wet
climate, and as Toynbee, who, like McNeill, was, at a crucial level, not a fatalist, nonethe-
less writes: “Ease is inimical to civilisation.… The greater the ease of the environment, the
weaker the stimulus toward civilisation.” 16 And thus Europe developed because of a geo-
graphy that was difficult in which to live but had many natural nodal points of transport and
commerce. For civilizations are in many ways brave and fortitudinous reactions to natur-
al environments. Take the proximity of Scandinavia and the military pressure it brought to
bear on Western European seaboards, which led to the articulation of England and France
as national entities. England, moreover, being smaller than the feudal kingdoms of the con-
tinent, and, as Toynbee writes, “possessed of better-defined frontiers [after all, it was an
island],” achieved far sooner than its neighbors a national as opposed to a feudal existen-
ce. 17
Of course, some landscapes, the Arctic, for example, prove so difficult that they can lead
to civilizational collapse, or to an arrested civilization. What precedes this, according to
Toynbee, is a cultural tour de force—say, the Eskimos' ability to actually stay on the ice in
winter and hunt seals. But once having accomplished this feat of survival, they are unable
to master the environment to the extent of developing a full-fledged civilization. Toynbee,
as well as the contemporary UCLA geographer Jared Diamond, write legions about civil-
izational difficulties and downfalls among the medieval cultures of the Vikings of Green-
land, the Polynesians of Easter Island, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, and the
Mayans of the Central American jungles, all of which were connected to problems with the
environment. 18 Europe, it appears, offered the perfect degree of environmental difficulty,
challenging its inhabitants to rise to greater civilizational heights, even as it still lay in the
northern temperate zone, fairly proximate to Africa, the Middle East, the Eurasian steppe,