Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
sweep of human history, the concept of a country with recognized borders and a centralized
government is a fairly recent invention. Much older is the idea of an ethnic group possessing
a distinct language, customs, and homeland.
Figure 14-2:
Three border op-
tions in a hypo-
thetical region.
For example, when the Europeans arrived in North America, they didn't find a country called the
United States divided by lines into entities named New Jersey, Kansas, Arizona, and so forth. Those
came much later. What they did encounter, however, was a continent inhabited by dozens upon
dozens of Native American ethnic groups, each of which had its own distinct homeland rather like
the areas labeled A through F in Figure 14-2. Similarly, when Africa was about to be divided into
colonies, it did not consist of the countries we see today, but instead was composed of the homelands
of hundreds of ethnic groups.
Typically, the boundaries of ethnic homelands in North America, Africa, and elsewhere were not
fixed lines established by formal treaty. More often they were ill-defined zones that lay on the peri-
phery of lands occupied by an ethnic group. Thus, they were fluid — prone to change. That is, if
a particular ethnic group gained or lost territory as a result of some conflict, the ethnic boundary
changed accordingly. For these two reasons — ill definition and impermanence — ethnic boundaries
were rarely used as a basis for modern boundary making. Instead, the treaty makers who were re-
sponsible for most of today's boundaries opted for the types discussed in the next two sections.
Natural (physical) boundaries
