Političko-geografsko značenje nizina
Politico-Geographical Importance of Lowlands

Summary/Abstract: Lowlands have always attracted man’s interest in spite of their monotonous relief. The main reason for this interest was the richness of the provision centre. Looking from the aspect of time and space the function of lowlands and the degree of their influence on the life of man was constantly changing. It depended, and it still does today, primarily on their geographic position, natural characteristics, potential economic abilities and technical progress. Consequently, those conceptions which diminished social and economic importance of lowlands in the past, have their own geopolitical bases, and those can be interpreted in the extremely negative sense. On the territory of the Far East and the Mideast lowland have, since lire an¬cient times up to the present days, been the space of the most intensive population and socio-economic valorization. The life of lire population was primarily based on agriculture, and as agriculture greatly depended on the rational use of water for irrigation, some of the social communities in their first phase preferred centralistic form of governing. Thus, certain centralistic formations appeared and their basic politico-geographic characteristic was: the size and the form of the territory corres¬ponded to potentionally cultivable territory and to the ethnical extension (China). Dry lowlands of the Heartland present provision centre which stimulates the development of nomadic-cattle breeding economy, and as a rule, very movable military social communities. Stability ot those slate formations is low., permanent migration of population is not favourable for the forming of the fixed centre of the state, nor the fixed national territory-. Nevertheless, the peoples of the Central Asiatic lowlands greatly influenced historical development of politico-geographic and na¬tional structure of Asia and Europe, and all these because climantic changes and biodynamics of population necessarily made them move in search for new provision centres. Different rules can be applied to lowlands occupying smaller areas, especially to European ones. Loess regions were from the climantic and pedological point of view especially suitable for population. The first nuclei of permanent population which gave rise to political stimulanses for the development of firm states, such as Kievan Rus\ Hungary and Poland, were formed exactly of these regions. The Loess regions were densely populated even at the mediaeval time. Moreover, we can say that alongside the Mediterranean, European Loess zone was the second most im¬portant life nucleus of the Continent, and this is still the case today. Quite opposite is the case with the marshy lowlands of the alluvial plains, gla¬cial valleys (pradoliny) and shallow damp tectonic depressions. Their connection with the life of man remains within the defensive and strategic limits, namely, mi-litary interest, up to the time of the corresponding technical progress which enables their revalorization from the economic, and therefore, from the politico-geographical aspect. Need for the greater amounts of food in the time of industrial revolution directs man’s interest toward marshy lowlands as well. Today, by the process of the littorization, lowlands arc turned into the eminent provision centres of the new life nuclei that are developing alongside the hanks or some more adequate locations (at the foothills and the seecoasts). By this process lowlands lose a part of popula¬tion, but if we take into consideration technical progress in agricultural production, this process is not negative.

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