[746] U.S.  Report of Commission of Navigation, p. 10.  Washington, 1901.

CHAPTER XII

CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS

[Sidenote:  Insularity of the land-masses.]

The division of the earth’s surface into 28 per cent. land and 72 per cent. water is an all important fact of physical geography and anthropo-geography.  Owing to this proportion, the land-masses, which alone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-fold larger surface of the uninhabitable ocean.  Consequently, the human species, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeply ingrained insular character.  Moreover, the water causes different degrees of separation between the land-masses, according as it appears as inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; it determines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently the geographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kinship between the divisions of land.  Finally, since the sea is for man only a highway to some ulterior shore, this geography of the land-masses in relation to the encompassing waters points the routes and goals of human wanderings.

Each fragment of habitable land, large or small, continent or islet, means a corresponding group or detachment of the vast human family.  Its size fixes the area at the service of the group which occupies it.  Its location, however, may either endow it with a neighborliness like that subsisting between Africa and Europe and involving an interwoven history; or remoteness like that of South America from Australia, so complete that even the close net of intercourse thrown by modern commerce over the whole world has scarcely sufficed to bring them into touch.  Therefore the highly irregular distribution of the land areas, here compactly grouped, there remote, deserves especial attention, since it produces far-reaching results.  Finally, continents and islands, by their zonal situation, their land forms, rainfall, river systems, flora and fauna, produce for man varied life conditions, which in their turn are partially dependent upon the size and grouping of the land-masses.

[Sidenote:  Classification of land-masses according to size and location.]

A comparison of the large and small land-masses of the from the standpoint of both physical and anthropological geography yields a classification based upon size and location on the one hand, and historical influences on the other.  The following table indicates the relation between the two.

  I. Independent Land-masses.

    A. Continents.  Independent by reason of size, which enables them
    to support a large number of people and afford the conditions for
    civilization.

      (a) Insular continents, whose primitive and modern development are
      marked by remoteness.  Australia.

      (b) Neighboring continents, separated by narrow seas and showing
      community of historical events.  Europe and Africa.  Asia and North
      America around Bering Sea.