If, on a mountain trail, you encounter a family of trees that seems gnarled or misshapen, leaning in a certain direction, the easy logical conclusion is that some force of wind, weather or land has made them that way. Similarly, and this is a bit less commonly thought to be the case, people, communities and even nations can take on a certain misshapen form, relative to some general mean of health and open disposition. And yet, in these situations, we tend to take their disposition as not merely primitive, but itself an irreducible constituent primitive term of humanity.
In truth, and this is where the idea reaches its furthest point from the usual path, people are shaped by the spiritual nature of a place. (Spirit isn't necessarily a glowing, magical thing, it's simply the changes that happen within time. The material thing without a substance of its own, but describable.) In the course of the long logic unfolding within their lives, across the many years, certain types of thoughts persistently occurred to them. And just as the spirit is material but without substance, these thoughts were about everyday things, but the manner of their occurrence was of a certain character. This is how to find the spiritual nature of a place -- examine the character of your own thoughts in that place. And after many years of a certain characteristic pattern of thinking,emotional response and physical action came to shape the organism. The trees along the path took on a certain shape.
These are the sorts of conclusions one should come to after having encountered people of many different ethnicities and nations, not least because if you've only explored a few, each would take these sorts of thoughts as a personal criticism. This is a universal phenomenon, and I'm sure that my own spiritual/arboreal shape, to a dispassionate observer from far away, would reveal some of the storms that I've weathered. Ah well. Like Shelley (I think), I always made an awkward bough.