Environmental Determinism (Climate Shapes Peoples)
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.
How it traveled
- De aere, aquis, locisKos · -370explains
- ProblemataChalcis · -322explains
- Historia animaliumChalcis · -322explains
- Enquiry into PlantsAthens · -300explains
- On the Causes of PlantsAthens · -287explains
- Geographiae ChrestomathiaAmaseia · 24explains
- Apotelesmatica (= Tetrabiblos)Alexandriaexplains
- Naturalis HistoriaRomeexplains
- In Hippocratis Aphorismos Commentarii VIIRomeexplains
- Res RusticaRomeexplains
- De Rubro Mari—explains
- In Hippocratis Epidemiarum IRomeexplains
- De Natura AnimaliumRomeexplains
- De alimentorum facultatibusRomeexplains
- OrationesPrusaexplains
- Epistulae—explains
- Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequanturRomeexplains
- Κατὰ ΓαλιλαίωνConstantinople (Istanbul)explains
- Fragmenta—explains
Key passages(20)
Apotelesmatica (= Tetrabiblos) · Claudius Ptolemaeus
Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur · Galen
Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur · Galen
Naturalis Historia · Pliny, the Elder
Physiognomonica · Adamantius Judaeus
Apotelesmatica (= Tetrabiblos) · Claudius Ptolemaeus