The forest-belt, owing to the dry summer, lay towards the snow-line, and below it a scrub-belt, yielding poor hunting, drove men to grow their corn and olives and vines in the least swampy of the lowlands, scattered like mere oases amongst the hills and promontories.
For a long time, then, man along the north coasts must have been oppressed rather than assisted by his environment.

It made mass-movements impossible.

Great waves of migration from the steppe-land to the northeast, or from the forest-land to the north-west, would thunder on the long mountain barrier, only to trickle across in rivulets and form little pools of humanity here and there.

Petty feuds between plain, shore, and mountain, as in ancient Attica, would but accentuate the prevailing division.

Contrariwise, on the southern side of the Mediterranean, where there was open, if largely desert, country, there would be room under primitive conditions for a homogeneous race to multiply.