geography

Environmental Determinism (Climate Shapes Peoples)

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The ancient theory that climate and landscape shape a people's bodies, temperament, and even their fitness for freedom or servitude.

Environmental determinism holds that the physical setting a people lives in molds both their bodies and their character. Harsh, changeable climates were thought to breed tough, warlike, freedom-loving peoples, while mild, fertile lands bred soft and submissive ones. The classic statement is the Hippocratic treatise Airs, Waters, Places (late 5th century BCE), which contrasted Europeans with Asians; Herodotus, Aristotle, and later Strabo and Vitruvius all reworked the same logic. The idea proved remarkably durable, resurfacing in medieval Arabic geography and again in early-modern European thought.

Where this idea shows up

17 Greek sources

Where to read it

De aere, aquis, locis370 BCE
Hippocrates· Kos
De diaeta370 BCE
Hippocrates· Kos
De humoribus370 BCE
Hippocrates· Kos
Aphorismi370 BCE
Hippocrates· Kos
De Generatione Animalium322 BCE
Aristotle· Chalcis
De longitudine et brevitate vitae322 BCE
Aristotle· Chalcis
Historia animalium322 BCE
Aristotle· Chalcis
Problemata322 BCE
Pseudo-Aristotle· Chalcis
Enquiry into Plants300 BCE
Theophrastus· Athens
On the Causes of Plants287 BCE
Theophrastus· Athens
De Ventis287 BCE
Theophrastus· Athens
De Republica54 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
De Fato43 BCE
Cicero· Formiae
Tristia8 CE
Ovid· Tomis (Constanța)
Geographiae Chrestomathia24 CE
Anonymous· Amaseia
Allegoriae (= Quaestiones Homericae)75 CE
Heraclitus the Allegorist (Homericus)
In Hippocratis De natura hominis175 CE
Galen· Rome