rk
Plateau was a boon, because its streams furnished water-power for much
needed saw and flour mills. Treeless Egypt even before 2500 B. C.
depended upon the cedars of the Lebanon Mountains for the construction
of its ships; so that the conquest of Lebanon, begun by Thutmose I. and
completed by Thutmose III. in about 1470 B. C., had a sound geographical
basis.[1033] Similarly the exploitation of the copper, malachite, turquoise
and lapis-lazuli of Mount Sinai, minerals not found in the Nile plain,
led the ancient Egyptians into extensive mining operations there before
3000 B. C., and resulted in the establishment of Egyptian political
supremacy in 2900 B. C., as a measure to protect the mines against the
depredations of the neighboring Bedouin tribes.[1034] Lowlands lack the
distinctive advantages of highlands found in diversity of climate,
water-power, generally in more abundant forests and minerals. The latter
are earlier discovered and worked in the tilted strata of mountains and
uplands.

Plain countries suffer particularly from a paucity of varied geographic
conditions and of resulting contrasts in their population. Their
national characters tend to be less richly endowed; their possibilities
for development are blighted or retarded, because even racial
differences are rapidly obliterated in the uniform geographic
environment, A small diversified country like Crete, Great Britain,
Italy, Portugal, Saxony, or Japan, is a geographical _multum in parvo_.
The western half of Europe bears the same stamp, endowing each country
and nation with marked individuality born of partial isolation and a
varied combination of environment. The larger eastern half of the
continent embraced in the plains of Poland and Russia shows monotony in
every aspect of human life. This comes out anthropologically in the
striking similarity of head-form found everywhere north and east of the
Carpathian Mountains, except in the secluded districts of Lithuania and
Crimea, which shelter remnants of distinct races. Over all this vast
territory the range of cephalic variation is only five units or
one-third that in the restricted but diversified territory of western
Europe. Italy, only one-eighteenth the size of European Russia, has a
range of fifteen units, reflecting in the variety of its human types the
diversity of its environment.[1035]

[Sidenote: Conditions for fusion in plains.]

In the plains geography makes for fusion. Russia shows this