Environment and Race

Abstract

IN “An Atlas of Environment and Race” (University of Chicago Bookshop, 40 cents), which is issued to accompany a course of lectures broadcast from Chicago by Prof. Griffith Taylor, is a series of 110 maps, of which 65 have not previously been published. The series, in addition to the maps of racial distribution usually accompanying the discussion of this topic, covers matters such as land elevation, climatic variation, vegetation, strati-graphical evidence and cultural distributions. As a whole, the series is both original and stimulating. The course is designed to prove the ‘zones and strata’ theory, in which, adopting the criteria of skull form and hair character, it is argued that the races of the world are arranged in five zones about central Asia a theory already advanced by Prof. Taylor in his “Environment and Race” (1927). Prof. Taylor stresses the paramount importance of the study of race to-day on the ground that two thirds of the world is occupied by coloured peoples “often chafing under European domination”.