The Hamlyn All-Colour Animal Encyclopedia [antikvár]

ForewordThe present map of the world is a patchwork of countries with varying shapcs and sizcs and has evolved over a long period of time. Somé parts of the pattern are old, many nations having long and honourable histories. The last three decades, however, have witnessed major change, with the number of independent states more than doubling in the wake of the process of decolonization. Independence has not always severed old ties and many of the new nations still retain social, economic, political and cultural links with a former 'mother' country.One of the salient features of the twentieth century has been the emer-gence of three blocs of countries, grouped according to the political and social ideas they espouse and to their different standards of living. The western bloc, which includes North America, Western Europe, Australasia and Japan, is usually rcgarded as the First of these three 'worlds'. The eastern bloc, the 'Second World', comprises the USSR and Eastern Europe. The 'Third World' includes a wide rangé of countries, especially in tropical areas, which often have diverse characteristics but whose peoples generally have lower incomes than those of the other two worlds.The emergence of so many newly independent countries marks a new phase in man's colonization of the world, the principal underlying feature of which is the uneven distribution of population over the earth's surface. For many millennia man has known of and lived in virtually all parts of the land area of the globe. Certain areas with favourable living conditions, such as the fertile, irrigated soils of the Nile valley and the deltas of south-east Asia, have long been foci of settlement. In contrast, three-fifths of the earth's surface has proved too rugged, too high, too cold or too dry to-provide the means of livelihood. For over two millión years man's numbers increased only slowly. Average length of life in Cromwell's England, 35-40 years, was little better than that of Neanderthal Man. But in the last two centuries, and especially in the last twenty years, man's numbers have shot up dramatically to the present 4000 millión. What has happened is that the combined advances of hygiene and medicine have precipitated the retreat of death, while in much of the world a fali in birth rates has lagged behind. There are now no empty lands of opportunity to which people can migrate and the burden of massive population increment is becoming intolerable in many countries, particularly the poorer ones where the biggest increases are concentrated. At present rates, for exam-ple, Bangladesh's population will double to 150 millión by the end of the twentieth century. At the same time, a massive redistribution of the world's people is in train. Man is becoming an úrban rather than a rural animal and nowhere is this process currently more in evidence than in the Third World where towns and cities are becoming teeming ant-hills. In most of the more developed countries the bulk of population has for decades been town-based and here the principal tendency is for large city populations to fali as people prefer to live in surrounding villages.Man's occupation of the earth has been marked by exploitation of its resources. Somé of these, such as air and water, continually renew them-selves. Others, such as the minerals and fossil fuels geologically laid down through the ages are non-renewable; once used they are gone for ever. While man's numbers were small and his industries primitive the need for materials was simply met, but more people and more industries have im-posed increasing pressure on natural resources.The availability of food has increasingly given cause for concern. Esti-mates vary, but it is commonly thought that at least one-sixth of the world's people are undernourished. In fact the food problem is not so much one of production as one of distribution.Mineral and energy sources have long been prized and today their dis-covery and exploitation are major tasks of international concern. Larger amounts of raw materials needed, and the demands of new technologies, have meant a continual widening of the scope and intensity of man's search for natural resources. Parallel with the hunger for raw materials has been a thirst for energy, particularly fossil fuels such as oil, and in recent years the strong bargaining position of countries possessing these resources has become apparent.One of the side efFects of growing population and industrialization has been disturbance of the ecological balance in many areas. The ever increasing amounts of waste generated by man's activities have created serious problems of pollution. Rivers and even the sea have in parts been deprived of life and made dangerous to humán health. The air in somé places has become unpleasant to breathe; it has killed vegetation and poisoned soils as a result of emissions from somé industrial processes. A consequence of increasing pollution has been a growing awareness of the need to conserve the environment and to pass on to future generations a natural heritage that is not ruined.This brief introduction to the world's population and resource base serves as a reminder that each of the countries depicted and deseribed in this atlas exists within two separate but related realms. The first is essentially national in that each country has its own individual, often unique, problems which arise from the management of its national territory and resources. The second realm is an international one. In a shrinking world, dominated by a complexity of trade, cultural and other links, no country can act for long in isolation. In the management of the earth's resources for the wellbeing of all its people each country owes somé responsibility to the larger community of nations.Right: Camels in Tunisia.Df Jollll Salt