<— / /' m at fc ch a noejz in the PfearzrEast, bsj RX O Instead 3nd R ~~&pl\l h\f l~iun».' n$ to , i . \~ro ty\ 3u. I let i'n o-f .Jzh £. Rms.ric3n osopr^plnicsl ^ooleti/ ; o 3 pi ^ 4-4- T no. (& y SuneL) 19/2. fy&m k/» ikf*- Death of George Borup 431 a satisfactory substitute for him in the short time remaining before the expedition was to start. The Honorary Committee, consisting of President Henry Fair field Osborn, Mr. Chandler Robbins, General Thomas H. Hubbard and Dr. Walter B. James ; and the Committee in Charge, consisting of Dr. E. O. Hovey and Mr. H. L. Bridgman, have begun prepara tions for the reorganization of the expedition along such lines as circumstances may necessitate, without changing the main objects of the enterprise, as set forth in the Prospectus issued in January, 1912. Colonel Borup and a number of the principal supporters of the expedition have united in the formation of a new plan. The expedi tion will be a memorial to George Borup, the young explorer who was so keenly interested in it and who was the mainspring of its present undertaking. Mr. MacMillan's connection with the enterprise continues as heretofore and he is utilizing the intervening time for the purpose of making additional preparation for the scientific work of the expedi tion. Most of the supplies and equipment for the expedition had been ordered. Some of the orders could be and were cancelled, but the preparation of much of the material was already so far advanced that it could not be stopped. The prepared material will not dete riorate, however, and it has been put into safe storage for use next year, while the special apparatus is being assembled at the Museum. The unexpended balance of the subscriptions already paid in has been deposited in a special interest-bearing account with the United States Trust Co. of New York, where the income will be added to the principal. As originally planned, the expedition called for $52,000 to meet its requirements, but the expense of cancelling the steamship and other contracts, of storing supplies' for a year, and of changing the per sonnel of the party will unavoidably somewhat increase the cost of the expedition. The subscriptions already made total about $36,000, so that the starting of the expedition is assured, though more money is needed for its full success. A\WA Wv> Eyck OW^Ae^d CORRESPONDENCE CLIMATIC CHANGES IN THE NEARER EAST To the American Geographical Society: In his "Palestine and its Transformation," Professor Ellsworth Huntington has applied to the lands of the Nearer East his theories of the pulsatory nature of climatic changes and of their relation to history. In so far as by this he means merely the general influence exerted,, through long generations, on a particular race settled in a particular country, no historian would disagree with him.* But when he insists that particular facts of history, and those among the most important, are directly the result of climate, it is necessary that the histor ian should check his claims by the facts themselves.f Professor Huntington frankly recognizes that Palestine and "the surrounding regions furnish perhap9 the best of all keys to the climatic history of the whole ancient world,":): and that "the accuracy with which its history is known . . . makes it a standard by which to test conclusions as to regions whose history is less well known."§ We accordingly have a right to demand that the history of Palestine and Syria "should present a close correspondence between climatic fluctuations on the one hand, and economic, social, and political events on the other."|| It will be our purpose, in the present study, to give in his own words Pro fessor Huntington's explanations for certain facts of history, and then to con front these explanations by the facts in the case. We begin with one of his favorite statements, that there was a "great route, now all unused, [which] led eastward from Egypt across the midst of the desert to Babylonia and the Persian Gulf,"1f and that "earlier we find a suggestion of similar conditions in Babylonian and Egyptian accounts of the passage of trade and armies across regions now desert."** Yet Professor Huntington cannot point to one single passage in the overwhelming mass of material from the ancient Orient in which we have a reference to such a route. It is true that earlier scholars assumed such a route, but there is no evidence, and a perusal of the actual inscriptions from which Professor Huntington's accounts have ultimately come will show that this is unjustified. For example, he tells us that "King Lugalzaggisi . . . expanded his rule across the desert to Syria ... It is hardly probable . . . that conquests could have been carried from the mouth of the Euphrates to the Mediterranean in those early days, unless the crossing of the desert were much easier than at present."tt Lugalzaggisi simply lists his conquests, of routes he says not a word, and in all probability his conquests were in Babylonia itself. Professor Hunt ington believes that it would have been impossible for Sargon the elder to have invaded "distant Syria ... if then, as now, the desert had been full of plunder ers, and the road through Palmyra had been the most southerly that an army could traverse."^ We know of these exploits only from late omen texts, which barely mention the conquest of Amurru, and the crossing of the sea of the * Cf: Olmstead, fournal of Geography, X, i63ff. 1 1 wish to acknowledge the inspiration, secured long ago from Professor G. L. Burr of Cornell University, which led me to an interest in this branch of study, as well as to active help from my col leagues in the University of Missouri, Dr. F. V. Emerson of the Department of Geography, and Mr. J. E. Wrench, my companion on both of the Cornell expeditions to the Orient. % Palestine, 250. § lb. 251. II lb. If lb. 30 ; cf. 159. ** lb. 375. +t lb. 38of . J* lb. 381. 432 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 433 setting sun (the Mediterranean). Amurru may be north Syria, though at this time it is probably rather to be found on the middle Euphrates, and an earlier version recently discovered gives instead the sea of the rising sun, the Persian Gulf. Aside from this question as to where the expedition really went, we should note that there is not a word as to route. Part of Gudea's material, we are told, "came by land across regions where to-day caravans hasten timidly in fear of plundering Bedouin, or do not travel at all for lack of water," and this proves "how peaceful and easily traversed [was] the desert four and a half millenniums ago."* Gudea again simply lists the places from which he secured material for his buildings. There are no topo graphical indications in the inscriptions, and scholars differ widely as to their identification, though there is a growing tendency to place most of them in or near Babylonia. Meluhha seems to be near the Arabian desert, but this comes close to the gates of his city, and the material from thence need not have been carried far. At any rate, we have nothing approaching proof of such a route. We are told that, in the Kashshite period, "we know . . . that Egypt, Syria, and Babylonia were united by trade of the briskest description across regions which now are desert," and that, with the Aramaean invasion, "between Egypt and Babylonia trade disappeared completely. No caravan could possibly withstand the raids which the hungry desert folk made throughout Arabia."t For the former period, we have a mass of information in the Amarna letters, but there is no reference to any route going south of that by the Euphrates, and there is as little evidence for the second statement. "The great armies which crossed the desert apparently did not follow the roundabout route through Palmyra or Aleppo, as all modern caravans do.":f: In those cases where we have a detailed enough account to permit exact topog raphy, we regularly have the Aleppo route taken, examples of which are the expeditions of Thothmes I, Thothmes III, Tiglath Pileser I, Ashur nasir apal, Shalmaneser III, Tiglath Pileser IV, Sargon. Esarhaddon and Ashur bani apal, or rather detachments of their troops, did cross the extreme northern part of the desert, but it is perfectly clear that it was not crossed south of Damascus, the goal of the trip. But the language used by the Assyrian scribes clearly shows that this was an extraordinary expedition through a "land of hunger and thirst." So far from the evidence pointing to the prisoners from Israel (sic) being carried to Babylonia "apparently across the desert,"§ the fact that Zede- kiah of Judah was taken to Nebuchadnezzar when he was encamped at Riblah in North Syria|| proves that the Babylonians used the Aleppo route. "In 674 B. C, Esarhaddon . . . led an army from the Euphrates River across the whole desert of Arabia to the remote south. By reason of the abso lute absence of water in vast areas, such a march would to-day be utterly impossible."1f "A little later Esarhaddon conquered Egypt and penetrated to the extreme south of Arabia, where he defeated the Mineans. Such extensive con quests would be impossible unless the desert was easily passable. They furnish strong evidence that remote parts of Arabia were more accessible than now."** As an actual fact, this expedition was connected with the return march from Egypt, and the references to Rapihi or Raphia, where is now the present Turko- Egyptian boundary, and to the stream bed of Musur, the "river" of Egypt of the *Ib. 382f. t lb. 390. J lb. 272. § lb. 273. II II Kings, 25, 20. 1 Palestine, 37s. ** lb. 400. 434 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East Old Testament and the modern Wady el Arish, where is now the first Egyptian outpost, show plainly that it took place not far from the modern route from Gaza to Pelusium. But, so far as we can make out from the mutilated fragments,* even that part of Arabia was far from being "much more accessible than now." In connection with this so-called "river," we are expressly told that this was "a region where was no river"; the water used by the expedition came from wells and had to be drunk from pails; there is mentionof "all the camels of the king of Arabia," and though what they did is lost in a break, we are justified in comparing the hiring of camels from the king of the Arabs by Cambyses, in order to have them bring water for the march of his soldiers through this very "dry desert without a drop of water on their way to Egypt."t Furthermore, we hear of stones, of double-headed serpents, and of a region so difficult that it was necessary for the god Marduk himself to come to the help of the king and to infuse new life into the soldiers. "In the middle of the seventh century, just after Esarhaddon's great con quests," was an outpouring of the tribes, and we are informed that "as early as 660 a slight advance of Indo-Germanic tribes from the dry region to the north began to trouble Assyria." Naturally, all the events up to the Persian conquest are ascribed to a change for the worse in the climate.^ Unfortunately for the theory, we happen to have for this very period a very definite statement as to the climate. To quote Ashur bani apal himself, "When upon the throne of my father, my begetter [Esarhaddon], I sat, Adad [the god of the atmosphere] poured out his rain storms, Ea [the god of the deep] opened [his springs], the forests grew mightily, the canes grew up in the thickets, so that no one could enter." Then we are informed of the great increase of the lions which inhab ited these thickets. § If somewhat later in the same reign we find mention of a famine in Elam,|| this simply proves that the Assyrians had good years and bad, even as we in America. One passage no more proves that conditions were worse then than does the other that they were better. "Almost every modern traveller has much to say of the hardships of travel in Sinai, and of the impossibility of its supporting multitudes of people. The ancient writers say almost nothing of this. We can scarcely suppose that they were fools or knaves, and therefore we must believe that they described things approximately as they were."1T What the ancient writers do say may be gathered from the following extracts from the Old Testament: "Ye have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger" ;** water fails for the people to drink ;ft the people complain that there is no food but manna ;# there is danger that it will be reported that the Lord has killed Israel in the wilderness ;§§ the people complain that "this evil place ... is no place of seed or of figs or of vines or of pomegranates, neither is there any water to drink, "|||| the more striking as our party found figs at one place in the desert, and Professor Huntington himself speaks of the "one or two grape vines which the officials had nursed through the droughts" of a very bad year;H1T the fear that the people may "die in the wilderness for there is no bread and there is no water";*** the "great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where was no water, "ftt which sounds almost like * The best edition and discussion in H. Winckler, " Untersuchungen zur Altorientalischen Geschichte," 98. f Herodotus, iii. 9. % Palestine, 401 f. § S. A. Smith, " Keil- schrifttexte Asurbanipals," II. 2.24 ff. [I Cylinder B. IV. 17 ff. 1 Palestine, 272. ** Exod. 16, 3. ft lb. 17, 1. U Num. ir, 4 ff. §§ lb. 14, 16. |||| Num. 20, e. HI Palestine, 125. *** Num. 21, 5. ttt Deut. 8, 15. Climatic Changes in' the Nearer East 435 an echo of the Assyrian accounts;* or the very significant statement in the early Blessing of Moses, "He found him [Jacob] in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness."! If more proof is needed, we have only to turn to the Egyptian inscriptions to see that there were only Bedawin tribes in the Sinaitic peninsula in their time, that even the very valuable mines at Wadi Maghara and Sarbut el Khadem were not regularly occupied, but were visited by expedi tions of such difficulty that the trip was sometimes, at least, made by water, and "a wearisome desert journey in Sinai was thus avoided."^: It was cause for special congratulation when the "youths returned in full quota, all of them. There was none that fell among them."§ Another caravan leader speaks of "traversing inaccessible valleys, bringing unknown extremities of the world."|| Perhaps the best commentary on Professor Huntington's statement may be seen in the word of the official who writes: "I arrived in this land in the third month of the second season, although it was not the season for going to this mineland . . When I came from Egypt, my face flinched, and it was hard for me. The highlands are hot in summer and the mountains brand the skin . . . this evil summer season."1F The weather conditions which could have thus afflicted an Egyptian accustomed to the blazing summer sun of Egypt must have caused the unfortunates who were compelled to travel there to say much of the "hardships of travel in Sinai." In the study of Hebrew history, Professor Huntington seems hampered by an unconscious apologetic tendency, if we compare his reference to a "certain school of critics who hold that the Biblical authors indulged in undue hyperbole," and his statement that "if the theory [of pulsatory changes] be accepted, a large num ber of narratives which now seem improbable become reasonable."** It would appear to be due to this that he accepts the numbers of the Exodus, as well as the general fact of such an event, considers that the data in regard to popula tion given by Deuteronomy are at worst only exaggerated, and even can believe in the accuracy of the census of David. An equally distorted perspective seems indicated by his belief that the kingdom "founded by Saul and extended by David" and brought to its height by Solomon "must have been a time when tribes of the desert were at peace by reason of abundant water and forage."tt This exactly reverses things, for the success of David is the success of the half nomadic and more than half uncivilized Judah against the better civilized Phil istines and Phoenicians, as well as the somewhat more advanced tribes of North Israel. According to Professor Huntington's own theory, this should rather prove that it was a time of distress, forcing out in layer after layer against the settled folk those tribes nearest the desert, and this might be confirmed by the fact that the great kingdoms of Assyria and Egypt have a time of eclipse at this very period. "The apparent populousness of Palestine, and we may add of Greece, points to" the conclusion that there was a "general prevalence of relatively moist cli matic conditions previous to the Christian era."tt But, as Grundy has so well pointed out.§§ from at least the sixth century onward, Greece did not produce enough food to support the population, and accordingly the great economic neces sity behind so much of the political history was the control of the grain trade * Esarhaddon, cf. 11., *p. 434; Ashur bani apal, Rassam Prism, VIII. 87!!. T Deut. 32, 10. $ Breasted, " Records of Egypt," I. 316. § lb. 319. II lb. 1 lb. 322. ** Palestine, 250. ttlb. 306. %% lb. 374. §§ Thucydides and his Age, passim. 436 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East from the Euxine. A large population in Greece, therefore, merely proves that South Russia at this time produced enough grain for export and proves nothing as to the fertility of Greece itself. That population decreased alarmingly after the age of Alexander and continued to decrease until long after the Christian era. But we no more need to call in climatic causes to explain this than do we for the conditions which have caused something like fifteen per cent, of the adult male population of Greece to be in the United States to-day. Life in Greece has always 'been hard and the country has always been overpopulated as re gards the food supply. What reduces population is not pressure at home, that is constant, but a suitable outlet. In antiquity, such an outlet was caused by the better opportunities to be found in the "Greece beyond the seas." To-day it is the opportunities for money making in connection with shoe shining parlors or candy shops which are making the maidens of Sparta sing "Anathema be America because it takes away our young men," and the cause of the emigration from Greece is as much to be found in climate as was that in antiquity, that is, not at all. As to the "favorable conditions centering near the time of Christ,"* we have as much right to deny this because Josephusf tells of a serious famine in the time of Herod which could be stopped only by the importation of Egyptian grain as we have, with Professor Huntington, to say that one of his periods of bad climate is proved by a mention of a famine in the times of Ramses IILt His quotation from Strabo§ showing that camel traders travel from Petra to Leuce- come with ease and safety "with so large a body of men and camels as to differ in no respect from an army,"|| really proves that so large a force was neces sary to guard against desert robbers and that the difficulty of crossing the desert forced the use of camels in place of the much more economical pack mules. The hunger, weariness, and sickness encountered by the army of Augustuslf suffici ently indicates the condition of the country. We might equally well argue that up to our own days Arabia has been fertile because there have been three great bodies of pilgrims who have gone every year to Mecca, with "so large a body of men and camels as to differ in no respect from an army," one along the west ern edge of the desert where Professor Huntington admits that to-day we have desert country, one straight across the Sinaitic peninsula, in spite of the "hard ships of travel," and a third from Persia straight across the heart of the penin sula. There are no indications in the ancient writers to prove that caravans so large or so frequent crossed the peninsula in antiquity. That Arabia was to some extent opened up to trade in Roman times is of course well known. But then so is the Arabia of the present day. When Pro fessor Huntington says, "The trade of Arabia was highly important, although now it is practically nothing,"** no one would suspect that this "practically nothing" meant some $55,000,000 annually.ft We can hardly make the trade of antiquity more. And it is very significant that the exports of antiquity are prac tically confined to desert products, a fact that hardly tends to make us believe in a great agricultural development. The trade route found by Carruthers was indicated by a well and a guard house. This may very well be the road of twenty days' length which ran from Egypt to Persia. We might think that this tended to support the theory, did we not read also that it ran through the desert * Palestine, 402. + Ant. xv. 30s. X Palestine, 303. § Strabo xvi. 4.23. || Palestine. 274. U Strabo xvi. 4.24. ** Palestine, 273. ft R. A. Wahab, Ency. Britannica, ». v. Arabia. Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 437 and was used only by the postal service,* an exact parallel to the post route of our own day from Damascus across the desert to Baghdad. To prove that con ditions have changed in the meantime, we should have been told of villages with indications of agricultural operations where now there are none. But to-day in North Arabia we have such fertile oases as Hail, Tema, Jauf, Khebar, Aneza, Boreda, not one of which can be proved more fertile in antiquity than they now are. Nor should we forget that the only real civilization of antiquity in Arabia was in Yemen, and in the Yemen of to-day travelers "speak with enthusiasm of the wealth of the soiI."t We know of course of Ghassanide settlements east of Syria, but these were due only to the protection of Rome.:): Professor Huntingr ton exclaims, when in the Arabah, "that such a desert was once the scene of active traffic, seems incredible. Yet the next day ... we were following the track of thousands of ancient caravans."§ Yet he himself has just told us of the pilgrims of the Mecca railway which runs through territory far worse than the Arabah. The fact that Ptolemy mentions five "rivers" in Arabia,|| or one at Palmyra,1T no more proves that they were rivers in our sense of the word than does the appearance on our maps of river-like stream beds to-day. In the one case as in the other, we have simply dry stream beds for which the Semites have always had a special term to distinguish them from the true river with constantly running water. Professor Huntington has written a chapter in explanation of the sudden rise of Palmyra, which he thinks due to abandonment of the more southern routes on account of the growing aridity. But he has first to prove that these routes are as important as he claims, — the Lucian passage certainly does not give this impression, — and then that their abandonment was really due to aridity. The somewhat cavalier dismissal of the "opening of communication by sea" as a cause indicates one of Professor Huntington's greatest weaknesses, a failure to realize the important part played in the history of trade routes by a substitu tion of one by sea for the old one by land. For instance, he tells us that "increas ing aridity, far more than any other cause, has reduced the traffic passing through Samaria to such small proportions that the old trade routes are almost negli gible as a factor in the economic and social condition of Palestine."** He forgets that no goods ever go now from Egypt to Babylonia by land, for the steamers to the Persian Gulf have taken the place of the camels, while the coastwise trade, fed by the railroads which enter the country from Jaffa, from Haifa, and from Berut, and continued in the interior lines northward to Aleppo, and southward to Medina, has made trade by caravan a matter of past history. But the route still remains, for the railroad from Haifa to Damascus and then to Aleppo is nowhere far from the line of the old highway which Professor Huntington now thinks can be safely neglected by the student of economic and social conditions. An even more striking example of his. inability to estimate the importance of sea competition is to be found in his treatment of the route from Gaza into Egypt. "Egypt could hardly have been so keenly interested in Syria, if the two lands had been separated by the deserts of to-day"ff forgets the fact that to-day, * Lucian, Rhet. Praecept. 5. t Margaliouth, Hastings' Dictionary of the F.ible, s. v. Arabia. % The " Ghazanide palace of Meshita . . built by Persian invaders in the sixth century," (Pales tine, 209,) is a curious combination of the now abandoned theory o( Fergusson and of the theory at present dominant. § Palestine, 219. II lb. 273. T lb. 362. ** lb. 407. TT lb. 269. 438 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East under British control, the Egyptian outposts are at Raphia, barely a day's march south of Gaza, that there is an Egyptian governor at Arish, also north of the four days' desert, that but a few years ago there was almost war between Tur key and Egypt over this very country, the trouble resulting in a delimitation commission which gave a good third of the Negeb, including Kadesh Barnea, to Egypt. A survey of the history of this boundary* indeed shows that "age after age Egypt has been in the position of a fortified camp, open to attack on its north eastern frontier and therefore always having its advanced lines as far as possible on Syrian soil," and this it is which has caused Egypt always to be "so keenly interested in Syria." As to the route itself, the traveler who has marched along it in the month of January with flowers along his path finds it not easy to realize that this is the same route of whose difficulty the ancients have said so much. There is still a fair amount of local traffic, though even this, so far as grain is concerned, is now cut off by the tramp steamers which anchor off the coast at Gaza. As to the through route, who will now be so foolish as to take the ex pensive ten days' march through the desert when he can, for a few piasters, go to sleep at Jaffa and awaken at Port Said? Professor Huntington compares the "great armies of the ancients" with the "little army of Napoleon." It is to be feared that he has never found out how small these armies really were. It can be stated without fear of contradiction that no ancient army of such a size pene trated so far into the interior of Arabia as did those from Egypt commanded by Tusun Pasha in 1811 and by Ibrahim Pasha in 1816. "From all the country up to Antioch . . . and to Tarsus . . . the Eastern trade went through Palmyra."t This would demand, for economy of effort, a route running southeast. But the 'one road, as the remains discovered by Professor Sterrett still show, ran northeast. Further, the road from Antioch to the east, as proved by an exceptionally large number of campaigns, always went by the Euphrates route, while that from Tarsus regularly went through the Amar.us Gates, Germanicea, Samosata, Amida, Nisibis, Nineveh, though cases of the route to Birejik and then due east are known. But the point to emphasize is the fact that we never, out of all the numerous accounts of routes eastward from these two cities, have one single case of one running through Palmyra, and indeed a glance at the map should be sufficient to prove its unlikely character. The immediate cause of the rise of Palmyra to power is clear. It was due to that strange breakdown of the Roman central administration which took place in the third century. Odenathus and Zenobia, like the majority of the so-called Thirty Tyrants among whom they are included by the almost contemporary writers of the Augustan History, were frontier rulers who had taken the oppor tunity of the breakdown to revolt from the central authority. Their situation in the desert was of special advantage to them because it gave them protection from attack, while their distinctly Oriental character gave impetus to what was essentially a reaction of the east against the west. When the Roman state began to recover from its malady, Palmyra at once disappeared as a power, the result of the attack by Aurelian, and not of an unfavorable change of climate. What combination of social, political, and economic conditions caused this breakdown and the slow and partial recovery which followed, this is not the place to dis cuss, but we should notice that it is to this same breakdown of government and not to climatic causes that we are to ascribe that dearth of architectural inscrip tions from 211 to 324 which has been so much emphasized in the book.:): * See more fully in Olmstead, Sargon, 6iff. t Palestine, 343. % lb. 334. Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 430 Professor Huntington was in Palestine in a particularly dry year, and this circumstance has given him a distorted idea as to the amount of water to be found. For example, he says in regard to Petra, "it is almost past believing that such a city could exist in so dry a situation."* The year we spent in Palestine was 'not, as we found to our sorrow in Galilee, an abnormally wet one. But at Petra we found the stream of water reaching down as far as the Khazneh, while a little above we celebrated the Fourth of July by taking a bath. At the point where the water went underground into the sands of the valley, there was certainly enough water to have filled a pipe of the size of the one which was found almost at this very spot. Accordingly, we may assume that in ordinary summers the people of Petra had as much water as they thought it worth while to make a pipe for. Other minor points may be noted. Against change in the country about the Lake of Galileef we still have important springs, while the rock cut aqueduct at Ain Tabigah shows that canals were needed in earlier times. No argument can be made from the accounts of Josephus, for it has long been recognized that he exaggerates as much here as he does in the case of the population of Jeru salem. The elaborate picture of Engedi drawn by Professor Huntington^ finds little justification in the "wilderness of Engedi," where David was able to flee from Saul,§ or with the listing of it as one of the villages of the wilderness.|| That in the late Canticles we should have a reference to "vineyards of Engedi'"!! is not surprising, but the admission of Josephus that it is a small place (po- lichne)** means much in a writer who always grossly exaggerates. The Negeb question has already been discussed in detail elsewhere,tt and it has been there shown that the lack of artificial mounds, of pre-Hellenic pottery, the references in the Old Testament and in the other pre-Christian literature, all prove that there was no more than a semi-nomadic population here. To that we may add that the evidence of the crops is by no means in favor of a great difference between antiquity and now. The only crops of which, so far as I know, we can be sure in antiquity are the cereals and grapes. Comparatively few acres are covered by the heaps of flint on which these grapes were trained, and indeed but a small part of the country, on the evidence of the remains, was cultivated in antiquity. This was only where there was actual water from the wells and water holes, or on the lower slopes of the apparently dry stream beds where the water seeping through the soil appears in the frequent themail or water pits. Professor Huntington tells of grape vines nursed through the drought. My note-book often speaks of grain fields which compared favorably with those seen to the north; now and then we found tobacco patches; durra grew on the edge of the sand dunes as if American corn, and we once found figs. When we remember that the land is still held only by semi-nomadic Beda- win, we are not surprised to find that the methods are of the crudest and the results comparatively poor. Nor can we, even for antiquity, demand that the inhabitants secure all their food from the nearby fields. Even if they had crops of grain, there is no need of assuming that vegetables and fruits need have been grown here. My own university town is about the size of Sebeta in the Negeb and is the center of a rich agricultural region, but we secure our vegetables by way of St. Louis. How much more this must have been true as * lb. 222. t lb. 179. $Ib. zoiff. § 1 Sam. 24. ' H Joshua 15, 62. f i, j4. ** Bell. Jud. iv. 402. tt Olmstead, Sargon, 56ft. 440 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East the main reason for the development of these towns was to be found in their position of advantage in trading with the more desert regions further south. Because the poverty ridden peasant or semi-nomad, with no reserve to fall back upon in bad years, cannot now make a living in a semi-arid country is no reason why it could not be done in Roman times when capital was abundant and capitalists controlled the peasant, already half a serf. Only our own days have seen the accumulation of capital comparable to that of the period when the Negeb cities were built, and even now we see many failures — for example, Garden City in Kansas, where just this lack of a reserve has caused the farmer to give up the attempt to carry on his farming in the face of a series of bad years. When Professor Huntington demands that Beersheba and Aujeh "raise good crops every year,"* he demands more than any American farmer, in much more fertile country and with all his argicultural knowledge, has a right to expect. We have thus tested in detail a considerable proportion of the facts which Professor Huntington has cited to prove the theory of pulsatory climatic changes. Some have proved to be no facts at all, others seem to prove the exact reverse of his theory of the development. In these explanations, he has minimized or entirely omitted recognized causes along geographic, social, economic, and polit ical lines. He seems to have claimed for his theory all facts which at first sight seemed to be in favor of it, without analyzing the antecedents or testing it for modification or rejection. Probability may well be in favor of a gradual move ment towards aridity over the entire globe, and there may have been such fluc tuations as the theory demands. But it is evident that Professor Huntington has not used his material with adequate care, his periods cannot be shown to agree with such facts as we have, and the historian, for the present at least, cannot use his results in writing his detailed history. A. T. Olmstead, University of Missouri. CLIMATIC CHANGES IN THE NEARER EAST: A REPLY To the American Geographical Society: An article such as that of Professor Olmstead in the Bulletin is of great value in emphasizing the fact that there are two sides to every question. I recognize that in the earnestness of the pursuit of a new and engrossing theory I am in constant danger of doing what Professor Olmstead accuses me of, namely, claiming for the theory "all facts which at first sight seem to be in favor of it without analyzing the antecedents or testing it for modification or rejection." Therefore I welcome all such criticisms, and am ready to modify my theories so as to bring them into accord with the facts. It must be borne in mind, however, that I have nowhere claimed finality for the climatic curves which I have published, nor for the theories which they represent. The whole conclusion to which the facts set forth in "The Pulse of Asia" and "Palestine and its Transformation" have led me is summed up in the preface to the latter book in the statement that "the climate of the past five thousand years has been * Palestine, 282. Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 441 subject to numerous changes, (and) these may have been a potent factor in the guidance of some of the greatest events in history." I emphasize the words ''may have been" and "some" because I do not want to be understood as claim ing that climatic changes are anything more than one of several important but, as yet, little understood factors, which may perhaps have co-operated with the well-known political, social, and religious factors upon which historians have rightly laid so much emphasis. My attitude toward the whole matter is ex pressed on page 403 of "Palestine and its Transformation," where I present a curve entitled "Approximate Climatic Fluctuations of the Historic Period." The statement is there made that, "The line representing climate — as here given- makes no claim to finality. The researches of a single year may cause the shift ing of a curve a century or more, or may smooth out some minor curve and add another. Yet in its main features I believe that it will stand." The investigations of the two years since these words were written have strongly confirmed me in the opinion expressed above, and Professor Olmstead's article, while most welcome as pointing out certain minor errors, does not in the least alter that conviction: When the smoke of his article clears away, it will appear, I think, that he has merely attacked a minor outpost and not the main fortress, and that, even so, his attack has not been successful. Let us proceed to count the dead and measure the breaches in the walls. The first point upon which Professor Olmstead lays stress is that I have as sumed the existence of trade routes across the Syrian desert in places where there is no evidence of any such thing. He attempts to prove this by informing us that Lugalzaggisi says nothing about the exact routes which he followed, that the sites mentioned by Sargon and Gudea have hitherto been wrongly identified, and that the Amarna letters make no mention of any route going south of that by the Euphrates. But what does this signify? It merely indicates that if scholars disagree about the extent of Lugalzaggisi's conquests and the places mentioned by Sargon and Gudea we must leave those particular pieces of evi dence in abeyance. In writing about these matters I followed good authorities, those that are reputed highest, but if later research places their results in doubt, that by no means disproves the theory of climatic changes, nor does it indicate that there were no roads across the desert. It merely leaves the matter unset tled. Curiously enough Professor Olmstead does not see fit to finish this sub ject in the paragraph under consideration, but defers it until he takes up the dis cussion of the conditions at about the time of Christ. There, with apparent for- getfulness of what he has said before, he speaks as if it were a well recognized fact that in those days there existed trade routes which now are not passable for caravans. The well and guard-house east of Petra, which I have described on the authority of Carruthers (Palestine, pp. 275-277), seem to be accepted by Pro fessor Olmstead as conclusive proof of an ancient road leading from southern Palestine and Egypt to the Persian Gulf. His comment on it is that "this may very well be the road of twenty days' length which ran from Egypt to Persia." To-day there is no possibility of such a road by reason of lack of water, as the Arabs themselves plainly state and as the explorer Carruthers has well shown. Professor Olmstead further informs us that according to Lucian, who lived from about 120 to 180 A. D., and whose writings belong to the period from 150 to 180 A. D., this road "ran through the desert and was used only by the postal service, an exact parallel to the post-route of our own day from Damascus across the desert to Baghdad." If Professor Olmstead had looked at the diagram of 442 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East "Approximate Climatic Fluctuations during the Christian Era" on page 327 of "Palestine and its Transformation," he would have seen that by the time of Lu cian there already seems to have been some decrease of rainfall as compared with the time of Christ. In a word, Professor Olmstead's contribution to our knowledge of routes in the Syrian desert comes to this: he throws doubt on some of the identifications of sites and routes which I had supposed to be correct, but which are at best of only slight value because they date back so far that at present any exact knowledge concerning them is impossible. Second, as to the days of Rome's greatness, when, according to the hypothesis under discussion, conditions were drier than in the days of Sargon, but nevertheless much moister than now, he accepts the evidence of the ruined guard-house as proving that a road existed where none can now exist for lack of water ; and furthermore he speaks of this as if it were a well-known road. Finally at a period 150 years after Christ, when, according to the hypothesis, aridity had increased somewhat, he says that this road was merely a post road, and adds the unproved statement that it was "an exact parallel to the post route of our own day from Damascus to Baghdad." The Damascus-Baghdad road was used only a few years when the British were trying to establish quick communication with India, but it proved too difficult and was abandoned. It is quite possible that after the days of Lucian the road from Egypt eastward fell into the same state as that of the Damascus road in the nineteenth century; now it is far worse. Professor Olm stead advances nothing which is in any way inconsistent with the theory of pulsatory climatic changes and much which fits that theory and does not fit the theory of climatic uniformity which he is endeavoring to support. Another of the points to which Professor Olmstead frequently refers is that ancient accounts from the very earliest times indicate that Arabia was always a desert. Of course it was. No one doubts this for a moment, and nowhere have I consciously given any hint to the contrary. Yet Professor Olmstead, when speaking of the supposed roads across the desert, remarks that "to prove that conditions have changed . . . we should have been told of villages with indications of agricultural operations where now there are none. But to-day in north Arabia we have such fertile oases as Hail, Tema, Jauf, Khebar, Aneza, Boreda, not one of which can be proved more fertile in antiquity thin they now are." This quotation is illuminating in two ways. It shows, first, that the critic is quite as liable to make rash statements as is the criticised. The fertile oases whose names sound so well are miserable little towns scattered over an area about 500 miles square, the only places worth mentioning in 150,000 square miles of desert. I think that I am safe in saying that no one of them has ever been visited by any man who has had the necessary geographical training and also the time and freedom adequately to investigate the matter. I know that I am safe in saying that no account of any such investigation has ever been published. Professor Olmstead's statement that no one of these can be proved to have been more fertile in the past than at present is absolutely without foundation. The quotation as to oases and as to villages in the desert is illuminating in another way. It shows that in writing upon this subject I have not taken due account of the fact that in the nature of things the historian or the general reader cannot be expected to have much idea of the true nature and causes of climatic phenomena. Professor Olmstead seems to have gained the idea that my theory of climatic changes demands that the desert shall at some time have blossomed as the rose. I have emphasized the fact that the change of climate demanded Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 443 by the hypothesis is not radical. Here is what I have said on page 261 of "Pal estine": "It would be a great advantage to Palestine if the winters were a few degrees colder, so that snow fell more abundantly and stayed longer than now, and if the rainy season were a little longer, so that there would be less danger of drought in the critical seasons of fall planting and spring growth. In the following pages it must be borne in mind that no greater changes of climate than this are postulated ... If the climate of Palestine during historic times were ever different from what it is to-day, it probably resembled that which would now prevail along the vEgean coast of Asia Minor if the relief of the land and its relation to the sea were' like those of Syria." As I was dealing mainly with Palestine I assumed that a statement of the effect of such a change upon the desert was not necessary. Any one possessed of a moderate knowledge of cli matology would know that a change of the kind here indicated, while it might have profound effects upon man, would not make the desert habitable. It would merely increase the size of the areas of cultivation along the edges of the des ert, it would increase the amount of grass and forage in the desert, it would make the springs more numerous and the wells less likely to dry up, and it would enlarge the available water supply of the oases and thus enable them to support a larger population. In "Palestine and its Transformation" I have given many instances where it seems to me that just these effects have followed. Pro fessor Olmstead has ignored these, which are the strongest buttresses of the theory of pulsatory climatic changes, and has devoted himself to proving that Sinai and Arabia were always deserts, a contention which is perfectly in accord with the theory that he attacks. They were deserts, and the man from the oasis or from Egypt must always have suffered when he tried to cross them, but they were apparently deserts in which the watering places and the forage were somewhat more abundant than now. I might go on to show other cases in which Professor Olmstead has failed to grasp the full import of what I have written. This may be due to lack of clear ness and precision on my part, and if so I must beg for pardon. For instance, in discussing the Exodus Professor Olmstead takes no account of the fact that my climatic curve shows a period of comparative aridity at that time, an aridity which may have had much to do with the movements of the early Hebrews. I have everywhere assumed that while a few Israelites may have come from Egypt, the majority came probably from the desert. Again, Professor Olmstead refers more than once to the vines which I mention at Aujeh in the Negeb. Here is what I have said about the matter: "The [ruined] walls and terraces just described were . . . manifestly intended . . . for olive groves, vineyards, orchards, or vegetable gardens. To-day, except for the few tiny gardens watered by the gasoline pump at Beersheba, no trace of such plants is to be found in the Negeb, unless it be one or two grape vines which the officials of Aujeh have nursed through the droughts." I ought to have added that these vines were only a year old and that most had already died. Even in a desert a man with a bucket and a well can nurse a few vines through a drought. It would be tedious to go into these matters further, but before turning to something more interesting and conclusive I feel that it is right to call attention to the rash way in which Professor Olmstead has used figures and to his ex treme inaccuracy. On page 436 he says: "When Professor Huntington says, 'The trade of Arabia was highly important, although now it is practically nothing,' no one would suspect that this 'practically nothing' meant some $55,000,000 an- 444 Climatic Changes in the Nearer East nually." He quotes the Encyclopedia Britannica as his authority. Let us an alyze the figures there given. They are as follows: Aden, £6,ooo,ooo, imports and exports combined. Jidda, £1,405,000 imports, £25,000 exports. Hoheda, £467,000 imports, £451,000 exports. Oman, £550,000, of which two-thirds are imports and one-third exports. Bahrein, £1,900,000 half imports, half exports. Total, £10,773,000. Out of a total of nearly £11,000,000 sterling, £6,000,000 belong to Aden. Aden is in truth a part of Arabia, but its business has practically nothing to do with that country. In the first place, it is a British colony, and its sole impor tance is as a port of call. Its population of over 40,000 has to import everything which it eats or wears. So far as the necessary materials come from Arabia they are included in the figures for other ports as well as for Aden. Moreover, its exports are practically confined to the re-exportation of articles which have been imported. In other words, Aden is merely a place of exchange. Practically its entire trade must be deducted before we can arrive at a true estimate of the real value of the trade of Arabia. Jidda, the next place on our list, is the port of Mecca. The disparity between its exports and imports is enormous. This means that the large amount of importation is due to the necessity of supplying food for the throngs of pilgrims. It is paid for by money which the pilgrims bring from other lands. Therefore except for the £25,000 of actual exports and another £25,000 of imports to balance this, we may fairly say that Jidda has no trade originating in Arabia. Passing on to other towns of our list, we find that all the trade of Hodeda, the port of Yemen, belongs to Arabia unquestionably. Oman, however, is only technically a part of Arabia. In all discussions such as that in which we are now engaged it is so far remote — 1,500 miles from the Dead Sea — and looks out so completely toward the eastern ocean and not toward the lands around Palestine that it does not enter into the problem of the relation of the trade of Arabia to the surrounding countries. Bahrein, likewise, is remote and scarcely enters into the problem. It is an island in the Persian Gulf, its exports are largely pearls, and its imports are paid for by the pearls gathered from the sea. Thus it is seen that while Professor Olmstead is tech nically right in saying that the trade of Arabia amounts to $55,000,000, he is wrong in a much truer sense. His statement is one of those misleading truths which lead to wrong conclusions. So far as the problem now in hand is con cerned, the trade of Arabia amounts to less than £1,000,000, and practically all of that is in Yemen, 1,400 miles from Palestine. This small sum of $5,000,000 represents the trade of an area about half as large as the United States. The city of Portland, Maine, whose population amounted to 59,000 in 1910, had a trade of $16,000,000 in 1907 and of $12,200,000 in 1908. It seems justifiable to say that, so far as the problem now before us is concerned, the trade of Arabia is "practically nothing." Professor Olmstead is not only careless in his use of figures, but he is far from careful in his representation of the views of others. A comparison of two quotations will illustrate the matter. Professor Olmstead makes the following statement: "[Professor Huntington] accepts the numbers of the Exodus, as well as the general fact of such an event, considers that the data in regard to popu lation given by Deuteronomy is at worst only exaggerated, and even can believe in the accuracy of the census of David." Here is what I have actually said: Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 445 'It may be admitted that many or even most of the details as to the wanderings of the Israelites are inaccurate, and that there is much exaggeration. It can scarcley be denied, however, that the story has an historical basis ... In the records handed down to us the number of invaders may have been multiplied ten-fold or twenty-fold, but it must have been large" (p. 271 "Palestine, etc."). "In David's time the population, according to the census which he took, is re ported to have been between five and six million. Most authorities agree with Hilderscheid, one of the strongest opponents of the theory of climatic change, who says that although these figures may be regarded as 'in Oriental fashion greatly exaggerated, yet it cannot be doubted that the population of that time was much more numerous and dense than it has now become'" (p. 263). If all Professor Olmstead's statements are on the same plane as those in regar.d to the present trade of Arabia and my belief in the accuracy of the census of David, his whole contention falls to the ground. I might go on to discuss other points raised by Professor Olmstead, but the dissection and criticism of another man's arguments are apt to prove wearisome to the reader. Let us turn to something constructive. In the present discussion two points are at issue — first, the verity of my hypothesis as to the actual exis tence of climatic changes on a large scale and extending over large periods; and second, the possible effect of such changes upon historic events. This second problem belongs primarily to the historian; the task of the geographer is to establish his own conclusions as a sound basis upon which his historical colleague can work. Therefore I shall turn to the purely physical side of the matter. In order to test the conclusions formed in Asia, I Went to California in the summer of 1910 and 191 1, under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and among other things made use of a method which was originally suggested by Professor A. E. Douglass of the University of Arizona. In .dry regions like Arizona the growth of trees depends almost en tirely upon the amount of winter precipitation. If the snow falls heavily during the winter and the rains last well into the spring, the long summer season of drought has compartively little effect, and the trees add to their trunks a thick layer of new wood. In dry seasons the reverse naturally takes place. It is evident then that by measuring the thickness of the rings of annual growth upon the stumps or trunks of trees that have been cut we can determine the relative amount of rainfall at any period during their growth. Accidents will, of course, affect the growth of individual trees, but actual experiments show that when a sufficient number of trees is used the effects of individual idiosyncrasies and even of such things as forest fires disappear, and the curve of growth corre sponds closely to that of rainfall. To be sure, certain corrections must be made in order to eliminate the difference in the rate of growth of young trees and old, but the corrections are purely mathematical and can easily be made pro vided sufficient trees are available. In California I measured the rings of about 200 of the so-called Big Trees, or Sequoia gigantea, high on the slopes of the Sierra Nevadas. The resultant curve is given herewith, the solid line. Horizontal distance represents the course of time, while vertical height represents the rate of growth. Where the curve is high the trees grew fast; where it is low they grew slowly. The numbers in parentheses below the dates at the bottom of the diagram represent the maxi mum probable error in ascertaining the years. 'The error may be much less than is indicated ; it can scarcely be more. The small numbers within the body 1300 (ijsoJ I ODDQoso) B.C-AD. OS n S ISOa Diagrams showing rate of growth of the "Big Trees" of California at different Periods. /SOO.A.D. a hia Climatic Changes in the Nearer East 447 of the diagram represent the number of trees used in preparing the curve. Back of about 500 B. C. the number is so small that the degree of accuracy is not high. From 200 B. C. onward there can be practically no question as to the general accuracy of the results, although further investigation may necessitate minor modifications. There is, however, some question as to whether the low places should not fall somewhat lower than they do, but this is immaterial for our present purpose. It arises from the fact that the final mathematical cor rections cannot be fully applied until more trees have been measured. What ever changes may be made by further investigation and measurement, however, it is practically certain that the general sinuous form of the curve will remain, for a similar sinuosity is characteristic of the curves of growth of numerous other species. Moreover, within the species the sinuous form appears in the same fashion no matter whether one takes one group of trees or another. It seems to indicate, and I may almost say proves, that the climate of California during the past 2,000 years has not only grown drier, but has also been subject to pro nounced pulsatory changes. Beside the curve of the trees from California I have placed another, that of the approximate climatic fluctuations of western and central Asia as given on pages 327 and 403 of "Palestine and its Transformation." This is the visual expression of the theory which Professor Olmstead criticises. The curve is far from final; many portions of it, as I have shown again and again, are based on fragmentary evidence, and will be modified as soon as more data are avail able. Everything now seems to indicate that each change in the Asiatic curve will bring it more into harmony with that of California. Even as the curves now stand there is a marked degree of similarity, which in some cases, such as the periods centering at the time of Christ and 1000 A. D., extends to details. The lesson of the curves is, obvious. We have before us two attempts at a re construction of the climatic conditions of the past. One, that of Asia, is based on fragmentary evidence of many kinds and is full of the errors which are inseparable from work of a new kind. It is also full of the errors which arise because of the prepossessions and personal equation of the investigator. The other is a continuous record based- on purely mathematical considerations. It cannot be changed by the investigator's private opinion and predilections. Yet the two curves in the main agree. They both indicate that the climate of the earth is subject to changes, and that those changes are of a pulsatory nature. Moreover, the changes as indicated in the California curve are of sufficient in tensity to cause serious modifications in the economic conditions of the inhabi tants of the* country. Therefore they must have had distinct and recognizable historic results. Farther than this I do not now care to go. I may have misinterpreted the results in many cases, but. little by little we are approaching the point of certainty as to the nature and date of climatic pulsations. With each step we are drawing nearer to the point where we, the geographers, can say to the historians, "Here are the definite facts as to changes of climate. What results have they produced?" Ellsworth Huntington, Yale University. GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOICETY Captain Amundsen's Cablegram. Capt. Amundsen cabled the following to President Huntington on March 19 in response to the President's message of congratulation-in behalf of the Society under date of March n printed in the March Bulletin: Mr. Huntington, President American Geographical Society: Sir: With the heartiest thanks fo.r your kirid telegram. Yours very truly, Roald Amundsen. An Exhibition to be given at the Society's House. At the meeting of the Council on Thursday, May 16, the working staff was authorized to collect photographs and other material to be exhibited in the large rooms on the first floor of the building. The plan is to show representative scenes in those parts of the country which will be visited by the Transcontinental Excursion, such as panoramic views of cities, the prairie of Glacial Lake Agassiz, the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, the Minnesota Iron Mining District; views of one or two of the larger reclamation works with bits of arid plains before improve ment and after; views in the Yellowstone, Glacier, Crater Lake, Mt. Ranier, Yosemite, Sequoia and Mesa Verde National Parks, the Grand Canon of the Colorado, etc. It is intended that the exhibition shall be ready by the time the foreign dele gates on the Excursion begin to arrive in this city. After the departure of the Excursion for the west the exhibition will be open to members of the Society and the general public. The Attendance at our Lectures. During the past session 3,766 persons attended the six popular lectures given by the Society in the auditorium of the Engineering Society's Building. NORTH AMERICA Magnetic Declination in the United States. Special Publication No. 9 of the Coast and Geodetic Survey contains a magnetic declination chart for the United States for the epoch Jan. 1, 1910. After the publication of the isogonic chart of the United States for 1905 so much additional data were accumulated and the secular change of the magnetic declination underwent such material modification that a new chart was demanded. Jan. 1, 1910 was selected as the epoch for the chart in order that the reduction of the observations to that epoch might be based on actual observations of the secular change. West declination is increasing much more rapidly in the North Atlantic States than was supposed in 1905. The annual change is now about 6' through out New England. On the Pacific coast east declination is increasing more rapidly than in 1905, but the region of the maximum annual change is now apparently some distance inland. The north end of the compass needle is moving to the westward at all" places east of the line of no annual change and to the eastward at all places west of that line. Accordingly, three regions may be distinguished: (a) In the region of the United States east of the line of no magnetic de- 448 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08837 1738