CHAPTER 11 
DISTRIBUTION OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION 
THE world’s total population, roughly about 1950 
millions, is very unevenly distributed. It is divided 
by the speaking of many languages; it exhibits diverse 
racial characteristics; and sections of it have attained 
to widely different degrees of culture and civilisation. 
From the minute point of view the world’s physical 
features are very varied.! From a world point of view, 
however, human beings are relatively but the merest 
specks on the earth’s surface, and the earth’s physical 
features, though relatively smooth compared with it 
directly, are imposing enough to man. His distribu- 
tion and his activities are greatly influenced, therefore, 
by the character of the surface on which he dwells, 
It is well to bear in mind, however, that, judged from a 
cosmic point of view, man is but a mere micro-organism 
and his population-number of 1,950,000,000 is utterly 
insignificant. The duration of an individual life, com- 
pared with the totality of Man’s life on earth, is 
also an insignificant fraction. For example, if he be 
taken to live on the average say fifty vears—more than 
! Looked at as a whole, the earth is nearly an ellipsoid of revolution, 
with a polar diameter that is less than its equatorial diameter by about 
the 1/293-5 part. To the eye sensibly a sphere, its highest mountain 
is about 1/1443 part of the diameter of the sphere. Represented by a 
globe one foot in diameter, this greatest height would be only 1/120 
part of an inch. On such a scale therefore the earth-globe would look 
smooth. Taking man’s height as, say, 5 ft. 6 in., he would be less than 
one five-thousandth of this, more exactly 1/5273. ‘Thus on the scale 
of the globe one foot in diameter, he would be less than one six- 
hundred-thousandth of an inch (1/634,045 in.), that is to say, quite 
ultra-microscopic.