ABSTRACT
In his book, ‘Civilisation and the Great Historical Rivers’, Leon Metchnikoff subjects the modern doctrine on race to a strict analysis. He first emphasises the remarkable fact that the very people who like to point to racial characteristics to explain social phenomena are the Darwinians, followers of the principle of evolution. Metchnikoff has made a detailed examination of the influences of ‘the great historical rivers’, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, the Yang-tse-Kiang and the Hwang-ho, on the development of ancient oriental civilisations. These civilisations were not merely ancient, but indeed the most ancient. The most important characteristics of ‘the great historical rivers’, according to Metchnikoff, can be reduced to the following: The lands watered by them can become either rich granaries from which the people working for some days can obtain their sustenance for the whole of the year - or they can become graveyards filled with innumerable corpses, the victims of floods, hunger and infectious diseases.
