Breasted Origins of Civilization

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THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION

By Professor JAMES HENRY BREASTED1/

'.

[Reprinted from THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY, 1919-1920]COPYRIGHT,919, BY THE SCIENCE PRESS.


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iRepliLted from THE SCIE~TlFIC :\IOO:THLY, October , I9lD. ]

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION tBy Professor JAMES HENRY BREASTED

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

LECTURE ONEFROM THE OLD STONE AGE TO THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATIONLINN lEUS was the first natural scientist to find a place forman in the natural system. There is an enormously longstage in the career of man when the study of him is obviously

the task of the natural scientist. Much of the work of theanthropologist and psychologist is properly classed as naturalscience. At a certain stage in the development of man, how-ever, we begin to call the study of him and his works archeol-ogy, history, philology, art and literature-lines of study whichwe sharply differentiate from natural science. I have oftenwondered what there is unnatural about man. If it could bedemonstrated that the pterodactyl was gregarious, built towns,made pottery, carried on industry and commerce, and left be-hind written records, I fancy that we should still call the studyof him paleontology and not divorce it from natural science.

It has been a source of great gratification to the writer thatin the William Ellery Hale lectures on Evolution, the career ofman has been regarded as a part of the course of-nature. Theprotoplasm is indeed a long way from the idea of liberty and thechimpanzee may antedate by millions of years the conception ofsocial justice, but the transition from the stage of biological tothat of social processes is a gradual one, even though we readilyrecognize that man has finally risen to many qualities and ideaswhich transcend matter and can not be placed under the micro-scope or weighed in the chemist's balances.

1Delivered before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,D. C., April 28 and 29, 1919, as the seventh series of lectures on the Wil-liam Ellery Hale Foundation.


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THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY{j8Ct~EPLE I STOCENE OR GLAC I AL AGE ~~~L.GEOLOG ICAL

1__ -..."fIRSTGLACIAL IRS SECONDG ACIAL ECON THIRD G L A C I A L H F O U R T H . ~ L A C 1 A L T O ac, PRESE.NT(JUNZ) N T E R " G L A C I A L ( Jv 1! NDE L) NT ER -G LA CI AL ( R_ tS ,S ), N TE R- G ! 0 NU M) A PP ROXI MATE :L .YUltASM {;ONZ-MINDEL) " "' SA N. ~ IN DE L ~ RI SS ) LfNO'S ..rW (RISS-WURM) I l lCON&'>! MOD_ERN CLMATE

ICE HEIDELBERG PALAEOLITHIC NEOLITHICI.~:!;!4000-5000 Maximum dat.e Introductlonof.- ~mfEET LOWER MAN 12S,oOOto7,OOOyearsB,C. POTTERY TL E un p !.:.n4:THAN NOW PROBABLY NO HUMAN HANDIWORK ~~~~~~~7,g~eB.C. I ~" _E 0 LIT H S (1?) ;:::~ ..

C v z 3 QrU(:"e,.GROUND STONE t~!';au~

EUROPE A N S AV A GE R! ~URO;;:~:ARBARI8~"""'--------:::---:---=--------::-~-.-.--~FIG. 1. D.rAGH.A:'I ()1


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29 2 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYsion that the stages of prehistoric culture on both sides of theMediterranean necessarily kept even pace with each other, andwere therefore always contemporaneous. This we know wasnot true as between North and South America; neither wasit true of prehistoric Africa and Europe. When the EuropeanStone Age hunters received metal in the JEgean area about3000 B.C., it was a thousand years before it had crossed Europeto Scandinavia and the British Isles. To speak of Mousterianflints found in Siberia as necessarily contemporary with thoseof France, is as absurd as to make Verestchagin, the Russianpainter, contemporary with Titian.

The existence of North African man in European glacialtimes has been clearly demonstrated. The flint implementswhich he wrought have been found, still lying in strata ofquaternary age in Algiers." In the caves of Gafsa in TunisSchweinfurth has also found flints of Paleolithic type, but notin stratifications or with a fauna which demonstrates their un-questionable Paleolithic age." In the same region, furthermore,Schweinfurth has found artifacts of even pre-Chellean types,lying in deposits of coarse conglomerate (nagelfiuh or "rpou-dingue" Fr.), which the discoverer concludes were of earlyquaternary date. He found 411 pieces, some of which he classi-fies as Eoliths and everything else as Chellean or pre-Chellean.'

These early Stone Age hunters of North Africa have leftmore than their stone implements to tell of their existence alongthe southern shores of the Mediterranean. In Algiers theycarved in the natural rock faces rude drawings of the animalsthey were daily pursuing. One of these prehistoric drawings(Fig. 3) shows us the Bubalus omiiquus, or ancient buffalo, acreature presumably of quaternary age in this region. Thisagain demonstrates the presence of Paleolithic hunters in NorthAfrica."It is evident that the Sahara desert during the age repre-sented by such remains, must have been a fertile region, withproductive soil and plentiful precipitation. This continueduntil the latter part of the glacial epoch; but in the last glacia-tion of Europe the climate along the Nile at least, was nearerthat of to-day. Graffiti and Neolithic remains in the western

2 See Boule, L'Amthropoloaie, 13, 1902, pp. 109-110, against Forbes,Bull. Liverpool Mus., III., 1901, No.2.

" Schweinfurth, Zeitschr. f. Ethn., 39, 1907, pp. 899-915.4 Schweinfurth, ibid., 39, 1907, pp. 137-181.Pomel, L'Anthropologie, XI., also Obermaier, "Mensch der Vorzeit,"

p.168.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZiclTION 29 3Sahara would indicate its habitability, however, in time rela-tively recent, as the Neolithic of this region seems to have con-tinued almost down to modern times." Gautier concludes thatthe changes here have not been due to alteration of the climateduring the last two thousand years, but to desiccation causedby dunes, cutting off the Sudan from the Sahara, and resultingin its absorption by the Berbers from the north.

The probabilities certainly are that fertile conditions in theSahara during the major portion of the Pleistocene permittedthe distribution of the Paleolithic hunters from Algiers to the

F'.IG. a . HOCK (;JL\FFITO OP THE "~[LD BCFF.\LO (Hubal'lf? ,'1 nt t q u u J L~ ALGIEHS.(;11,\,(d hy IlJ'plIis1oric lmn t ers in ih Pnn.-oilhie Aao. (~\fh-'l' l'ollWl.)

Nile. But the Nile of that period offers a geological historywhich we must have in mind, because it went hand in hand withthe career of man in northeastern Africa.

During or just before the formation of the lower levels ofthe Upper Pliocene, while the Mediterranean coast line was atthe site of later Cairo, two extensive fractures occurred, vary-ing from 7 to 24 km. apart. They extended southward fromthe coast some four hundred miles to the vicinity of Keneh,forming what is called a "block fault" in the earth's crust.As the block between the fractures sank it formed a great rift

G E. F. Gautier, L'Anthropologie, 18 (1907), pp. 37-68, 314-332.


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FIG. 4. MAP O 'F THE EGYPTIAX RIFT IX PLIOn,xE-I'LEISTOCENE 'rUlES. (AfterBlanckenhorn. )

or trench, stretching from the sea shore at the site of modernCairo in latitude 30 N., to Keneh in latitude 26 7' N. (Fig. 4).The entire rift is in the Eocene limestone. Other more localfaults of varying origin carried the rift above Thebes south ofwhich (at Gebelen) it narrows. Measured along its bends theen~ire trench is almost 450 miles long. (Railway distance fromCairo to Luxor is 416 miles, and Gebelen is over 17miles aboveLuxor.)

As Blanckenhorn, to whom we chiefly owe these facts hasshown,' the rift was open to the sea, which entered and pene-trated as far south as Dahaibe, then about ninety miles fromthe sea shore. Here must have been for a time the earliestmouth of the Nile. But this was much later. The intrusion ofthe sea fell in the transition from the upper Middle Pliocene to

7 ~lanckenhorn, "Geschichte des Nil-Stroms," in Zeitschrift der Ge-sell. fur Erdkunde, 1902, pp. 694-722 and 753-762.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATIONthe lower Upper Pliocene. It was contemporaneous with thebeginning of increased precipitation in the Upper Pliocene, fol-lowed by the rainy transition period from the Pliocene to thePleistocene, which Hull has called the Pluvial Period.

The narrow connection of the new Egyptian fjord with thesea was early largely blocked and the rapidly gathering freshwater of the east and northeast African drainage soon filled therift and formed a large lake or series of lakes stretching fromthe region of Thebes to the sea. Into this lake or lakes plentifulstreams flowed from east and west, carrying into the greattrench extensive masses of conglomerates, gravels, marls, lime-stones, etc., which covered the bottom of the trench, and formedalso in massive terraces of alternating limestone and induratedgravel along the walls of the rift (Fig. 5).

The characteristic fossil contained in these deposits is thelacustrine mollusc Melanopsis, the period of whose prevalencein this region seems to correspond to the already climaticallycooled Upper Pliocene and Early Pleistocene especially of thefirst glaciation in Europe. This is at least the current andprobable hypothesis. Accepting this probability, the earliest,that is to say the lacustrine, terraces of the Egyptian trench be-long to late Pliocene and early Pleistocene times.

In the immediately succeeding drier period, correspondingto one of the early glacial periods (perhaps the first Inter-Glacial), the Nile stream for the first time appeared in thisEgyptian rift. From this time on, river terraces were formedalong its banks, though in relatively limited extent. Two ofthese river terraces can be discerned between the lacustrineterrace above and the alluvium below. The higher river terraceis from 6 to 30 m. (along its lower edge) above the level of the

FIG. 5. SCI IE~IAT IC CROSS-Sl lC1' rox OF THE EOYPTIAN RIFT.


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THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

W E S T E R NASIA

FIG. n . DLiGIL\,:U SIIOWIXO ATTE:.\ll"rED CC)l{IUE AXI) F:GYPl'.

alluvium; the louier is only 9 to 10 m: above the alluvium. Thelower of the two is not everywhere observable or distinguish-able, for like the typical Nile alluvium it also is made up of Nilemud, sand and fine gravel, without any coarse rubble, and itemerges as a more or less wide, gentle slope along the edge ofthe cultivated land, and is therefore not sharply distinguishedfrom the latter.

The fauna of these Pleistocene deposits is confined as a ruleto shells of fresh-water molluscs still living in the Nile. Tothese may be added only one extinct variety, the Unio Schwein~iurthi (Martens). Very few remains of mammals have beenfound in deposits of this age, but they include buffalo horns andteeth of the hippo and elephant, while the marly lake depositsof the Fayum have yielded teeth, hoofs and leg bones of thehorse. With these was also found the mandible of a man, laterunfortunately lost. A comparison of this fauna with that ofSyria has led Blanckenhorn to the conjecture, if not to the con-clusion that in these southern lands, especially Egypt, there didnot develop a pleistocene fauna analogous to that of glacialEurope-as if the climatic conditions, at least in the laterPleistocene, the time of prehistoric man, were not so differentfrom those of to-day as in glaciated Europe.

After the formation of the two river terraces shown in the

297HE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATIONcross section (Fig. 5), the Nile began laying down the presentalluvial floor of the valley. For the deposit of this deep stratumof alluvium, varying from some thirty feet in depth at T.hebesto over a hundred or even over a hundred and t~Irt~ feet In theDelta it is evident that the relatively brief period SInce the re~treat 'Ofthe ice in Europe was quite insufficient. Blanckenhornestimates that the lower half of the clayey sands a~d sandyclays forming so much of the Nile alluvium was deposited dur-ing the last glacial period of Europe. .

To summarize, it will be seen that the geology of t~e NIlevalley, in so far as it bears on the age of man there: displaysf hi f . ds : I The Lacustrine Terraces (=Phoceneandur c ie peno . ., GlFirst Glacial?) ; II., The _Upper River Terra~e S~co~d.~-. I?) III The Lower RIVer Terrace (= Third Glacial.") , IV ,cIa., ., . . P tThe Alluvium, Lower (=Fourth Glacial), Upper os ~Glacial ?) . . )In view of the probability that the Lacustrine (Mel~noPsIsstage reaches over into the First Glacial, and the certainty t~atthe lower Alluvium reaches back into the ~ourth ~r Last Glacialit is tempting to make the Second and ThI~d Glacial correspondrespectively to the two River Terraces (FIg. 6). Th~ four ~la~cial ages would then be parallel with the .four main peno~sdisclosed by the Nile deposits. These geOIOgICa~arallels are. Inno sense vital to this presentation, however, with the exceptionof the conclusion, clearly demonstrated by Blanckenhorn, that

F'IG. 7. KILl: VALLEY ALLUYHDI AT SIt T, seen from on f.' of the lower riverterraces.


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FIG. 8. THlc NILE VALLI 'lY ALLUVIUM AT SWT, WI' I' n RIVER TERRACE IX FOHEGROUXD.(Photograph by Underwood & Underwood.)

the Lower Alluvium corresponds to the European FourthGlacial.

Turning now to the Nile valley as we find it to-day, the viewof Siut in Fig. 7 furnishes a characteristic prospect across theblack alluvial floor of the Nile valley from the distant cliffs inthe east, to the western cliffs from which the photograph istaken. As we step back up the slope, we include within therange of the camera one of the lower river terraces seen in theforeground of Fig. 8. Again the cliffs near Der el-Bahri atThebes display characteristic formations of the Lacustrine Ter-races, above those of the river (Fig. 10).

These terraces are clearly correlated in a geological map ofthe western cliffs of Thebes by Schweinfurth (Fig. 9). Theband below shows the extent of the cultivated land, the allu-vium; the next band above it represents the river terrace, pre-sumably the upper, the lower disappearing at this place, whilethe uppermost band shows the situation of the lacustrine ter-races. According to Blanckenhorn, it will be recalled, theselacustrine deposits, characterized by the fossil mollusc Melon-apsis, were laid down in late Pliocene-early Pleistocene times;the upper levels therefore may belong in the First Glacial

:299THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATIONPeriod of Europe. At that time the Sahara .pl~teau was habi-table and discoveries of Schweinfurth would indicate that ~;o~-ably ~s early as the European First Glacial Peri.od, men a ~ 0produce flint implements lived along the margm of the cliffs,above the lake here at Thebes.If Schweinfurth is correct the rude artifacts produced ~ythese men were carried by the drainage from the shores of their

plateau dwellings into the lake, where they are now e~beddeddeep in the lacustrine terraces below the brow of the cliff's. He

(B' Schweinfurth.)FIG. \) GEOLOGICAL :1.1.\1' OF WE:s'I'rme< THEBES. ~


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F!(;. 10. TeE,} .(T~THISE TE1DU_CJ.:~ SEAH HEI: EL-HJ IInr os 'rnr: \\~ES1' Nan: _\'1'TlTE1H~N. The levels containing artif;H ts are lll


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302 THE SCIENTIFIC lvlONTHLY

As the great Egyptian lake shrank and the earliest NilecUl'~entbegan to move northward in the old bed of the lake, thedram~ge of the l~tter p~rt of the Pluvial Period carried largemasses of the neIghbormg rock rubbish into the valley, and

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 303these materials helped to form the Upper River Terrace. Theycarried down with them numbers of the flint artifacts alreadylying on the plateau, and these early works of man are nowfound embedded in the conglomerate and indurated gravels ofthe Upper River Terrace. They were first noticed by Gen. Pitt-Rivers as far back as 1881, at a spot marked with a cross bySchweinfurth on his map (Fig. 9) near the mouth of the wadicalled el-Wadiyen (" the two wadis") north of Seti I's Templeof Kurna, on the road to the Kings' Tombs.

Little attention was paid to Pitt-Rivers' discovery; but overtwenty years later Schweinfurth placed its correctness beyond

FI(;. 1,,1. Htl\'E-!:E\\,\ TO )1 1t ( pj H, ], hS()\\ '\ .\;-;) "~.\1\'J' EL-LEBE_\." In lIlt' V!)l1-gIvll lt 'l ';l j' e w(111Bof this court


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FIG. lG. RIVER TEIUL\CE ~\LOXG TIlE ::\ 'rLE .vr T'HEBEN. Here the plateau hun-ters li ved when t hey shifted from the plateau down intu the ~ile Rift, (Photographhy L'uderwoort & L'uderwood.j

Fig. 14 were therefore excavated from a conglomerate or"nagelfluh" formation, hard enough for such excavation overfour thousand years ago. Here are thousands of square yardsof wall surface embedded in which large numbers of flint arti-facts may be found. It requires considerable effort with coldchiseland hammer to disengage these works of early man, thusembedded in a late rock formation.

The materials of which this conglomerate is composed showclearly that they came from the neighboring heights; and theirsituation at the lower end of a wadi leading down from theplateau leads to the same conclusion. Finally the artifacts con-tained in the formation are of the same types and workmanshipas those found still lying on the plateau. The remains of manfound in this terrace belong therefore to the plateau culture,and to a period of that culture long antedating the formation ofthe terrace.

When the Theban river terrace containing these artifactswas forming (compare Fig. 5), the earliest Nile was at least 15to 20meters (over 45-60 feet) above its present highest level. Asthe river declined in volume, probably during the Second Inter-Glacial of Europe (see Fig. 6), the plateau hunters began to

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 3(1)shift into the valley itself, and to occupy the stretches of terraceon the river's brink. Primeval forest alternated with marshand jungle along a raging flood of the vast river. Here on thedry and exposed rubble heaps the plateau hunters took up theirdwellings. They gradually transferred their flint workshops tothe brow of the upper river terrace. Here their flint imple-ments are still found lying on the surface (Fig. 15).

Their hearths and doubtless later their wattle huts were dis-tributed along the river terrace not far from the cliffs behind;for the vantage ground between the foot of the cliffs and the rivermust have been scanty at first. Itwas natural that they shouldscratch their hunting records on the rocks of the cliffs behindtheir homes, and it is doubtless to this stage of human life in theNile valley that we owe many of the game animals pictured onthe rocks. At a somewhat later stage the reed floats which theformer plateau hunters had learned to make for crossing theriver along which they had now established their dwellings, weredisplaced by primitive wooden boats, the earliest known. Ofthese also, the hunters have carved rude pictures on the walls ofthe Nile rift (Fig. 16). The great age of these cliff pictures isinterestingly shown by the fact that the areas cut away by the

FIn. H), CLIFl" PIC'lTHl:} (H' A PIH:1rITIYE NrLE l-It;_\;TEH'S H[:IH: Woorucx Bo.vr,The enrIiost \\'OOd(:'11 craft known, cut on tho cl llf's at el-Knb. (After Green In Pro-cccdin t) of III" Soci('ty of 1Ii /)I(' (I/ Arclw('%.!l.Ir, Vol. XXV,)

VOL.VIT,-2(',


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30 6 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYancient hunters in carving these figures are covered with a denseblackish brown patina, the somber raiment worn by all rocks inthe desert and called by Walther" desert varnish." Accordingto Lucas" it is due to oxides of iron and manganese dissolved outof the stone by the rare rains and the dews, and changed on thesurface by the heat into ferric oxide and manganese dioxide,which are insoluble and dark colored. The same conclusion wasearlier published by Lortet and Hugounenq"; but Linck, on thecontrary, maintains that the patina is due to a fine dust de-posited by the winds, and adhering finally firmly to the surface,and that it comes from without, not from within the stone."However this may be, surfaces cut away in making hieroglyphicinscriptions some 4,500 to 5,000 years ago, have in this longinterval gathered but slight traces of this desert varnish. Wemust conclude therefore that its presence on the cut surfaces ofthe prehistoric cliff pictures, if it does not demonstrate, is atleast in harmony with, a very remote date for the hunters whowrought these earliest records in the Nile valley.As the flint implements still lying on the surface show us,these earliest Egyptian hunters were advancing to occupy moreand more of the valley, as the waters of the river receded.When the Nile had finally sunk to its present bed, these pre-historic Nile dwellers settled upon its shores. Often they musthave dwelt directly on the dry rubble heaps and stretches ofsand and clay, which once formed the bed of the PlioceneEgyptian lake. Then the river began laying down the alluvialfloor which has now covered the remains of these prehistoricsettlements on the old lacustrine bed of the valley. There theylie with thirty feet of alluvium over them, and there it will beimpossible ever to recover them.

Thus in the Fourth Glacial Period of Europe the Nile beganto deposit the fertile alluvial floor which now forms Egypt(Fig. 7). As this floor gradually spread on each side of theriver, it greatly improved the conditions under which the Niledwellers lived, and while the hunters of Europe were contend-ing with cold and ice, these men of northeastern Africa wereenjoying a mild climate, of unequaled salubrity, and likewise

&" The Blackened Rocks of the Nile Cataracts," Survey Dept., Min-istry of Finance, Cairo, 1905.

9"Coloration noire des rochers formants les cataractes du Nil," Comp-tes rendus, Acad. Sci., Tome 134, 1902, p. 109.

10 Linck, "Ueber die dunklen Rinden der Gesteine der Wuesten."Jenaische Zeitschr. f. Natururissenscn., 35, 1900, pp. 329-336; quoted bySchweinfurth in Zeitschr. f. Ethn., 35, 1903, p. 815.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 307

freedom from the formidable mammals which confronted theEuropean hunters.Proof of the existence of these remote prehistoric settle-ments on the lower alluvium is not wanting, although it hasthus far been found only in the general latitude of the southernapex of the delta. From 1851 to 1854 L. Horner sank ninety-five pits and borings down through the alluvium in this region.""In a large majority of the excavations and borings, the sedi-

V"HL ]7. l 'HOSTTI.\TE CULO:-:;SAL Pqlt'rl{.HT OF H.\J.nn::s II. :\T ~lE;\IrIllS,

ment was found to contain, at various depths and frequentlyat the lowest, small fragments of burnt brick and of pottery."We know that burnt brick could not possibly have existed inthe days of the dwellers on the lower alluvium, and Horner's"burnt brick" must therefore have been simply larger frag-ments of pottery. His shafts around the colossal statue ofRamses II. at Memphis (Fig. 17) disclosed the lower coursesof the substructure supporting the statue. He also reached thebottom of the substructure under the obelisk of Sesostris I.

11See L. Horner, " An Account of some Recent Researches near Cairo,undertaken with the View of throwing Light upon the Geological Historyof the Alluvial Land of Egypt," Ph.ilceophical Transactions of the RoyalSociety, Vol. 145, 1855, pp. 105-138, and Vol. 148, 1858, pp. 53-92.


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308 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYat Heliopolis. His measurements enable us to compute the rateat which the alluvium has accumulated in this latitude duringthe last three or four thousand years. Since about 1950 B.C.the rate of accumulation at the obelisk of Sesostris I.has beenabout 3.90 inches per century, while at the Memphite colossusof Ramses II., since the thirteenth century B.C., it has beenabout 4.08 inches. There is a slight margin of uncertainty dueto our ignorance of the exact ancient level of the alluvium onthe substructures and our ignorance of the exact dates of themonuments." The borings in the latitude of the obelisk, but onthe opposite side of the Nile brought up pottery from depths asgreat as fifty feet, or even nearly sixty feet. Using the rateof accumulation for the latitude of the obelisk, we gain a dateof about 15,641 to 18,410 years before 1854 for the people ofthe lower alluvium. That is, the indications are that theseearliest makers of pottery lived from 15,700 to 18,500 years ago.

Even larger figures than these would result from computa-tions based on the discovery of pottery in the lower alluviumat a depth of 22 meters at the southern apex of the delta byLinant Bey; or at 27meters on the Mahmudieh Canal by AbeL'SOn the Damietta branch in the delta Schweinfurth reports ahuman skull found at a depth of 24 meters." Itwill be seenthat the results of computation based upon such facts as theseaccord very well with Blanckenhorn's demonstration that thealluvium of Egypt began to be laid down long before the endof the last European glacial period, some eight or ten thousandyears ago.

The earliest settlements on the old lake bottom and alongthe gradually widening strip of earliest alluvium have beendeeply buried by the thick stratum of the upper alluvium whichnow floors the valley and covers the whole space between theriver terraces (Fig. 18). There lies buried all that remainsof the story of an advance through the possession of pottery,the gradually acquired ability to cultivate the wild grasses, theancestors of our own cultivated cereals, and also the conquestof the wild life and its transformation into our domestic ani-mals. The men who accomplished these things gradually re-claimed the jungles of the Nile rift, and as the valley then en-joyed but scanty rainfall, they began to cut the first trenches

I" Horner's calculations of the rate are vitiated by the incorrect datesfor the monuments themselves current in his day.

1:1 DeMorgan, "Recherches sur les Origines," I., Paris, 1896, p. 19.14 In Blanckenhorn, "Geschichte des Nilstroms," Zei tsch.r , der Gesel l.

[iir Erdkunde, 1902, 761.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 31,9

for the irrigation of their little fields, the predecessors of theirrigation canals which we survey from the top of the GreatPyramid. Thus these earliest Nile dwellers slowly shifted fromthe life of hunters to that of tillers of the soil and breeders offlocks and herds.

As generation followed generation it was found to absorbtoo much of the cultivable area to bury the dead in the alluvium.They therefore began to make their cemeteries just outside ofthe alluvium, along its margin. As the rising alluvium spread

F IG . 1 8. THE S1 Jn:F'ACl~OF' l .'HH Pm: :SE: \' r CPPEll ALLUVIUM Oli ' THE NILE VALLEY.Kowcovt' ri ng the remuins of the earliest human settlements on the floor of the riftor lake bottOll1,-HS seen from the top of the Grent Pyramid. (Photograph by Un d er-wood & l;nderwood.)

out over the valley across the old lake bottom, these cemeterieswere covered up in their turn. There can be little doubt thatthey stretch in a long wandering line, roughly parallel with theedge of the alluvium which now covers them. They are notbelow the limit of excavation-at least the later ones would bewithin reach of the excavator, if they could be located. Exca-vation would then be quite feasible. The problem of determ-ining the location could be solved by boring, and this shouldbe begun on a large scale all along the margin of the allu-vium, in the endeavor to find a cemetery. A single cemetery


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310 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYthus discovered might reveal to us the pottery, stone imple-ments, probably cultivated grain and even domestic animals aswell as the bones and skulls of an Egyptian community thou-sands of years older than any predynastic community nowknown to us. Itwould furnish us with a single mile post be-tween the Egyptian whose stone implements we have found onthe river terraces, or whose pottery has been disclosed by theborings already mentioned on the one hand, and on the otherthe prehistoric Egyptian in possession of grain, domestic ani-mals and metal as we find him in the earliest cemeteries nowknown.

Fj(~. ] 9. A (}nocp OP E~\RLY EGYl'TIA?1 CC;\lEfr:uIEs .\_LOX(~ TIn_] Rr vnu TIJ,nILACE..lu-.t outsi dv t hr- mu rgiu of the nlluvtum. (;;\ftE',t Rt~isnpr, s , :;Sn.ga rl-Der," I, pl. 2.)

The supposition that the cemeteries of the lower alluvialperiod were placed along the margin of the alluvium and justoutside it, is based on good evidence. The earliest cemeteriesknown occupy this very position (Fig. 19). When they werefirst discovered about twenty-five years ago (1894-5), theysuddenly revealed to us a group of pre-dynastic Egyptian com-munities, the earliest of which were already acquainted withmetal (copper), though it was not yet plentifully used for im-plements. These cemeteries therefore represented an outgoingNeolithic stage. A quarter of a century of excavation among

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 3tlthese cemeteries has not yet carried us back into a pure Neolithicstage of culture. Must we therefore suppose that there neverwas any pure Neolithic culture in the Nile valley?-that the un-inhabited Nile rift was invaded by outsiders already acquaintedwith metal ?-and that for this reason the cemeteries of a metal-using people suddenly begin some centuries before 4000 B.C.?Ifwe answer this question in the affirmative, we must assumethe extinction or emigration of the pottery-makers disclosed bythe borings in the lower alluvium. A population which hadearlier maintained itself for many thousands of years along theEgyptian rift from the days of the plateau hunters, throughtheir descent to the river terraces, until their occupancy of thelower alluvium and the discovery of pottery-after this enor-mously long occupation of the region-can not be conceived tohave disappeared from northeastern Africa, leaving it unin-habited until some centuries before 4000 B.C.It is consequently impossible to conclude that the pre-dynas-tic cemeteries begin suddenly and abruptly, marking the reap-pearance of man in the Nile rift after a period of thousands ofyears without any human inhabitants there. We must conclude,therefore, as we have done above, that the cemeteries whichmight reveal the successive earlier stages of a pure Neolithic,pre-metallic culture, bridging the present gap between the pot-tery-makers of the lower alluvium and the earliest pre-dynasticcemeteries now known, will be found under the present marginsof the alluvium. Indeed my friend Mr. A. M. Lythgoe, of theMetropolitan Museum, while he expressed some reserve towardthe above hypothesis when I proposed it to him, at the sametime told me that he knew of one of the earlier cemeteries ofwhich one edge was covered by the alluvium.

While there is a gap in our knowledge between the men ofthe lower alluvium revealed by the pottery of the borings andthe men of the cemetery burials, it is evident that during theperiod represented by this gap the favored hunters of the Nilevalley, not being exposed to the ice and cold of glaciated Europe,were able because of this sheltered situation in northeasternAfrica, to advance so fast that they left far behind their StoneAge contemporaries all around the Mediterranean. This isshown at once in the quality of their stone implements, whichhad during this interval reached what we may call the Neolithicstage. The successive earlier stages represented by the flintartifacts at first left on the plateau and afterward on or em-bedded in the river terraces, while they were probably earlierthan the Paleolithic implements of Europe, roughly correspond


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31~ THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Flu. :!n. Tltlt1l~I; ~/L\UEH. ()F If'Ll:':'T 1:\ll'LE\lE:-.:'rs FH()\{ : \U !{ 'r IlE. \: -- ;T . .\[>HI('_\. Thetwo h( luw nt right rrom tlu- plu ton n : all lh'l~' bplo\\' ;II"P J)l'ohnhl,r r;11a\olitllic; thi'"ri pplo- Ilu kcd ' l~l ljf{~ nhovc i s frol1l u l)l'(-dynllHtic huri.rl.

genetically to a Paleolithic stage of work (see lower artifactsin Fig. 20). The progress in the gap preceding the earliestcemeteries carried the Nile-dwellers forward to a Neolithicstage represented even in the earliest burials by superb" ripple-flaked" knives (see Figs. 20, 21). Nothing illustrates thesuperiority of the prehistoric Egyptian over all his contempo-raries in other lands more conclusively than the remarkable pre-cision, beauty and regularity of these flint knives. Nowhere inthe world, indeed, have Neolithic craftsmen ever produced any-thing which can be compared with this work. This advance ofEgypt demonstrates an industrial superiority over Europe andAsia beginning in the middle of the fifth millennium B.C., whichwas maintained some four thousand years and was never lostuntil the advance of Greek industry and commerce in the sixthcentury B.C.The other leading craft possessed by these men of the earli-est cemeteries was that of making pottery (Fig. 22), as we

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 318might expect in view of the fact that their ancestors of the loweralluvium were already producing it. It contained a large pro-portion of Nile mud, and with its black-topped, red polishedforms, or red polished with white line decoration and brown orblack incised, this earliest cemetery ware is now well known.It is impossible to offer here a complete inventory of the

content of these earliest known burials in the Nile valley, but wemay notice the presence of hand-bored stone vessels, face-paintpalettes made of slate, and often bearing traces of the face-paintonce ground upon them; besides many objects of ivory, like"figures, combs, hair pins, bracelets, rings, vessels, harpoons,etc."] .,

'1 he people who thus equipped their dead lived in smallsettlements along the margin of the alluvium; for the presenceof the cemetery of course means that a community of livingpeople dwelt not far away in the cultivated area. A group ofwattle huts furnished their dwellings, and around thesestretched fields of barley, millet and wheat, with patches of flax,while grazing near were flocks of sheep and goats, and herds oflong-horned cattle. Donkeys were already bearing the peas-ant's burdens from field to village, or village to market. The

1"'10. :.!1. FLI~T K:\,lFE .. HIl'l'LE-FLU';ED ox OSE RIDE A~D GHCH:?\D 0:.'\ TilEOTHEU. From a hu rlul in the pro-htstorlc cellHtel'Y of Ahn.dlyvh, Egypt. (Photo-graph hy Pet ri e. )

lli Reisner, "Archaeological Survey of Nubia," Vol. 1., p. 316.


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314 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYgreat jungles and marshes which once stretched far along thevalley, the home of the tropical beasts so long pursued by theplateau hunters and the men of the river terraces, had now beenreclaimed and drained and made fit for cultivation of vegetablefoods, or the pasturage of flocks and herds. A vast northeastAfrican game preserve had thus been transformed from ajungle into the fertile home of the earliest cultivators of the soiland breeders of cattle and

sheep anywhere known onearth. The settlements ofthese earliest agriculturistsand cattlebreeders stretchedfar along the valley fromlower Nubia." to the sea,and now these vanishedgenerations, who originatedanimal husbandry and do-mesticated our food-grainsstill sleep in these ceme-teries, scattered along themargin of the alluvium.Their villages have disap-peared, but these ceme-teries, dis c 0v ere d onlytwenty-five years ago, aregreat repositories of thelife which once went on inthe vanished settlements.

FIG. 22. POTTEHY IN A" EAHLY PREDY-X.\HTIC BcltL\!, tx EnYl"r. (Aft er photo-graph by Reisner.)

The character of the food supply is revealed by an examina-tion of the bodies from these cemeteries. The stomachs and ali-mentary tracts of practically all such bodies from the veryearliest cemeteries contain husks of barley, while about ten percent. also contain millet (Panicum colonum) of a species nolonger cultivated. The husks of barley are much more difficultto detach from the kernel than those of wheat or emmer, theother prehistoric cultivated grains, and these latter, thoughthey did not carry their husks with them into the bread, mayalso have been present in the bodies examined," but do nothappen to be represented by husks.

Emmer is a kind of split wheat (Triticum dicoccum), nowvery little cultivated. The wild form called by Koernickeand

16Reisner, " Archaeological Survey of' Nubia," Vol. I.17See remarks of Netolitzky, to whom these researches were entrusted

by Ell iot Smith, in Hrozny, " Getreide," p. 178.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 315Aaronsohn Triticum dicoccum. dicoccoides (better by Cook, T.hermonis), was discovered by Aaronsohn in 1906on and aroundMt. Hermon in north Palestine, and later as far south as Moabin the trans-Jordan country. In 1910 it was also discovered inwestern Persia on the Kermanshah road in the Zagros Moun-tains.There is no doubt, according to Koernicke, that we mustrecognize in wild emmer the ancestor of cultivated wheat. The

FIn. ~a. BODY OF A "~O'::\L\:-'; J


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31 6 THE SCIENTIFIC iltONTHLYIt is interesting to notice that wild emmer is always found

growing together with wild barley (Hordeum sponuineums ,which is common in western Asia. The two were without doubtused together as food by early man, while they were still in awild state, and domesticated together. Whether all this wasdone in western Asia or northeastern Africa can be determinedwith certainty, if ever, only when the botanical exploration ofthe Near East, at present hardly begun, shall have been thor-oughly completed.It should be noted that the grain found in the bodies of theprehistoric Egyptians and in the pottery jars accompanyingthem, dating back of 4000 B.C., is the oldest cultivated grainknown to us, by over a thousand years. The nummulitic lime-stone crevices in which Aaronsohn found wild emmer growingin Palestine, are of course plentiful along the Nile, for suchstone forms much of the material out of which the Nile terraceswere built up. Here then, after using the wild barley andemmer seeds as food for ages, these early Nile dwellers mayhave begun to plant and cultivate them. It is only after ages ofselective cultivation, as shown by the wheat, that the situationis revealed to us in these oldest cemeteries of the world. Thelong process of selective cultivation which had produced wheatbefore 4000 B.C., might therefore carry us back of 5000 B.C.for the beginning of the cultivation of grain, and the rise ofagriculture.It is also important to notice that such bodies as Fig. 23often lie on a reed mat, with flaxen cord, and that some of themare wrapped in linen already displaying a good deal of textileskill. This is the oldest linen known to us, by an enormousmargin. The fields of flax which furnished this linen representa flax culture already very old, and descended probably from atime when the Nile dwellers originated the cultivation of flax.

rnejll'intf'd f'rrnn THE SCIF:>:'I'll'IC:Vf):\'I'HLY, Novembe r. HlHl .j

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATIONBy Professor JAMES HENRY BREASTED


LECTURE ONEPROM THE OLD STONE AGE TO THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION. IITHE evidence for the possession of domestic animals is not asold as that for agriculture. The bodies from the earliestEgyptian cemeteries contain fragments of bones of mammals,but there is no way to prove that these necessarily small frag-ments belonged to domesticated mammals. Nevertheless, theresults of long continued selective breeding demonstrate theremote origin of domestic animals in the Nile valley. At thesame time the monuments reveal the Egyptians as persistentlypractising domestication far down in the historic age.

Pre-dynastic reliefs (Fig. 24)to be dated not later than themiddle of the fourth millennium B.C., already show us three ofthe commonest domestic animals, the donkey, sheep and cattle.The domesticated donkey of Egypt was long ago demonstratedby Schweinfurth and others to have had its original home innortheast Africa and to have been domesticated on the Nile.Its wild ancestor, Asinus iseniopue, or the steppe ass, is stillfound as far north as the mountains of southern Nubia."

The sheep shown in this carving still display primitive cnar-acteristics, carried over into the domesticated state, e. g., stand-ing ears and a mane, and the female with horns, which she laterlost. They have been identified as Oiris longipes palieoxgypticu8by Duerst and Gaillard. Their nearest relatives, as both thesetwo scientists admit, are still scattered over north and north-east Africa to-day. It is the more remarkable that these twopaleontologists would draw this sheep from Asia. Lortet, onthe basis of far more material, states that this sheep (01Jislon.qipes pal.) with transverse horns, spirally twisted, has somany and so widely distributed relatives in north Africa, thathe must be considered as indigenous there."

Regarding the large cattle shown here the paleontologistshave differed widely, with perhaps a majority maintaining hisAsiatic origin, due to the fact that they were unable to find anunmistakable wild ancestor in Africa. His alleged Asiaticorigin has been commonly asserted in popular books, coupledwith such a remote date for his domestication, and his intro-

l'Schweinfurth, Zeitscl1'1'. f. Ethn., 44, 1912, pp. 653-654.19 Lortet-Gaillard, "La Faune Momifiee de l'ancienne Egypte," Lyons,

1905, p. 100.


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417 THE SCIENTIFIC lvIONTHLYduction into Egypt by some mysterious and unidentifiable im-migrants alleged to have brought in Egyptian civilization fromAsia, that we now find a widely circulating popular statement,to the effect that the Asiatic origin of Egyptian domestic ani-mals has demonstrated the Asiatic origin of Egyptian civili-zation.

Both the monuments and the still largely unexplored Pleis-tocene strata of Egypt contain much evidence on this question.

F](L : 2 ' - t - . EnYI'TL\~ HELIEI< ( _\B YE!) J.:'\ ;-;;L\TE. IL\TT);,O ,\HOt'T TIlE )IJIHlLE O!_;;' rI :E FUl"HTIl : :\ [lLLES::\IL:\f_. B,C, ~h()wil lg dom cst lcn ted shepp tlH 'low). doukevs (mid-dle), an d cattle (nbove ), CaVtl11'Nl from the Lihyuns. Now in the :\atiolln1 ::\lnseumat Ca iro.

It quickly disposes of the Asiatic orig.n of these long-hornedcattle. Much inscriptional evidence has shown that the Egyp-tians practised the hunting of wild cattle, but a relief in Beni-hasan which shows these cattle as spotted has led to the conclu-sion that such alleged wild cattle were really domestic breedswhich had escaped from captivity and were running wild. Thediscovery of a relief of the Pyramid Age showing a huntingenclosure (Fig. 25) filled with game to be brought down bythe royal arrows, has effectually disposed of this conclusion.Among the game entrapped in the enclosure we find a cow. a

YOLoVII.-27.


FIG. 2 3. A:: \,C~IE:: \"rl' E{jYPTL-\~ REL IBF S II OW IXG A ROYAL IIU.: \'TI~G E"KCLOSGREJ;lLLEll wrrn \\"O":\llEll A:\DULS. From the pvramir l temple of Salmre. middle oft he 28th cent ury H.C. (Aftcr Borchardt.) .

calf and a bull, all of a red brown color with a lighter saddle.T~ese are unquestionably long-horned wild cattle, identified byHilzheimer as Bas africanus. Pleistocene wild cattle have beenproven to have existed in Algiers, and this evidence is nowsupplemented by the discovery of the fragment of a head ofBas primigenius in the Nile valley, in the Pleistocene depositsof the Fayum. The presence of the Urus thus demonstrated inEgypt has led Hilzheimer to recognize the wild cattle in thishunting scene also as the Bas primigenius. In any case it istotally gratuitous to identify any longer the long-horned cattleof Egypt with an Asiatic species.It is very instructive in this connection to notice that the

Egyptian continued his efforts at domestication ona wide rangeof wild creatures, far down into the historic epoch. In thescene under discussion (Fig. 25), dating from the middle of thetwenty-eighth century B.C., we see the enclosure, which hasbeen well said to be of itself a long step toward domestication.Here have been caught the deer, the gazelle, the oryx, theaddax, and two varieties of goat. Of the leading Egyptianantilopes only the ibex is lacking. The practice of capturingthese animals in an enclosure evidently very early showed theEgyptian that he might in this way maintain a store of meat onthe hoof from which he could conveniently draw at will. Inthis way, for example, the Tschuktchi of northeast Asia main-tain herds of half-domesticated reindeer, which they employonly as sources of flesh and skin clothing. These wild creaturestaken out of such enclosures alive were then stall-fed and par-tially if not wholly domesticated. We see them in the tombreliefs between 3000 and 2500 B.C. (e. g., Fig. 26), along withthe long-horned Bos africanus, tied to their mangers and feed-ing. Here are the goat (HiTCUS mambrinus), the gazelle tGa-


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41~) THE SCIENTIFIC lvIONTHLYzella dorcas), the addax (Addax nasornaculata), the oryx(Oru leucorijx) and remarkably enough, the hyena tHiuenastriata) .

The inscriptions confirm these relief pictures very conclu-sively. A mortuary text of the Middle Kingdom (around 2000B.C.) mentions "ibexes which eat grain." Similarly alreadyin the twenty-seventh century B.C., the tomb of Kegemni men-tions "stables of the plateau antilopes" (Fig. 27). There werethus" stables" for these creatures, parallel with the stables forthe large cattle, and designated by the same word. It is ofcourse a scene from one of these stables which shows theseanimals eating at their mangers (Fig. 26).

These animals therefore formed a staple source of the foodsupply and we find them in process of being slaughtered forfood, precisely as is done with the large cattle (Fig. 28). Henceat an inspection of the cattle of an estate, these creatures whichwe have never thought of as domesticated, duly appear togetherwith the long-horn cattle familiar to us as domestic animals(Fig. 29).

FH,. 2ft ~'l'"\ LL li 'EI mI: \G OF' R}:Jrr-I)()\fE~TICL\TED A);"TILOI'ES (FIrE Y.\IUETIES}A::\'D Hvnx.vs, .-\LO~G wrrrr C..ATTLE. Ite l lef scene in the tomb of )"{( rel'uka at Sak-karn, Egypr, ~7th century n.c.

I I


In the same way, after domesticating varieties of the gooseand duck, the Egyptians captured a varied list of wild fowl~hich t~ey wholly or partially domesticated, although this listdid not mclude our barnyard fowl, which was introduced in thewest from India from the seventh century B.C. onward. Itwillbe seen, then, how widely extended and inclusive was the effortof the Egyptians at domestication. They were still continuingthe task in historic times, and it went on throughout the thirdmillennium, if not much later.Itis evident from the conditions among their domestic cattle

furthermore, that they had long been engaged in the process of


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.r4~1 THE SCIENTIFIC :!,'O'VT!!L j'

Fli;. ~!l. ('.\TTLI-: 1\~JJ.:(TJI)"\ 1:\I'1.U)I:\I; : -- :E _!T-U() \ [ESrU_\TLP A ,\ TJUl 1 I :;- ; .\U~~I.;\V1Tl l I )O :\ !EST J( . \. TE J) ( .' .' 1" [" 1. F. ),s xhown jll l'Flil-l'~ frorn rln- tl)}llb


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423 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYOn the other hand Professor Charles B. Davenport, director

of the Department of Experimental Evolution of the CarnegieInstitution, has kindly informed me that" hornlessness in cattlehas probably arisen many times as a sport or mutation," andmight then be continued and perpetuated by selective breeding.He concludes that the hornless breed of ancient Egypt aroseand was continued in this way. In either case intelligentlypractised cattle-breeding on the part of the Nile dwellers at avery early date. is evident.

We can understand therefore, that the production of milk-producing cattle was the result of long-continued and intelli-gently directed selective breeding, already completed by 3000B.C. That the milk breed had not yet become wholly accus-tomed to the artificial abstraction of milk by the hand of manis evident from the fact that in practically all such dairy scenes,the hind legs of the cow have been elaborately tied (Fig. 32).It is perhaps of importance to note also that the calf is kept inthe vicinity, and its eagerness for maternal food is restrainedby another herdsman while the milking process goes on.It is thus evident that conditions both in agriculture and

cattle breeding in the Nile valley at the earliest stage whenthey are observable by us, point clearly back to a long antece-dent development, beginning far away in the remote ages whenthe Nile dwellers lived on the lower alluvium, where the re-mains of their life are still buried.

The domestication of cattle, like that of donkeys, reactedpowerfully on agriculture, as it was gradually discerned thatthe hoe might be replaced by the ox-drawn plow. Nothingshows more clearly the evolution of Egyptian civilization as aNile valley process, than the unnoticed fact that the plow drawn

FIG. 32. EGYP~'IAX IIEHDSMEX "UI,KH'G. Relief scene in the tomb of Ti at Sakkara,28th century B.C.


FIG. ~):3. EUYI"l'L\.: ' \ PE.\S.\.STS P !An \' 1: \G. F rom it tomh relh'f 01: the :Wth-27th( Plltnr,r n.c., now in rh Louvre in I'nr!s.

by oxen is simply the old prehistoric wooden hoe equipped withnecessary modifications. The primitive form of the Egyptianplow is twice shown in the right-hand column of hieroglyphs inthe plowing scene in Fig. 33. Now it can be demonstrated thatEgyptian writing has preserved for us pictures of primitiveand archaic forms of every day implements, which survivedthus in the writing long after they had been displaced by im-proved forms and hence had ceased to be used in real life.Thus the inscription behind the plowman (Fig. 33) twice dis-plays for us a tiny picture of a form of plow enormously olderthan the one here shown in actual use. Itwill be seen that thebeam of the plow (in the inscription) is very short, and thatthe handles are almost too small for use. Indeed this oldestform of the Egyptian plow is little more than the hoe out ofwhich it has developed.

The wooden hoe of the Egyptian peasant (Fig. 34) wasmade up of two pieces: one, the handle, abnormally short; theother, the blade, disproportionately long. With the exception ofthe tiny handles shown in the archaic plow just examined inthe writing, this hoe is identical with the plow.

An old Egyptian drawing of a plow of about 2000 B.C. (Fig.34) exhibits clearly the origin of the implement. The handle(of the hoe) has been lengthened to become the beam (of theplow) while the handles for the plowman's use have been sec-


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42 5 THE SCIENTIF'IC MONTHLYondarily attached at the point of junction of beam and hoe-bladeor plow-share. The builder really constructed a wooden hoewith somewhat elongated handle as plow beam, and then after-ward attached the plow handles, wh.ch do not engage with thebeam or the plowshare, as they would do if they were of oneconstruction with them.

These facts make it certain that the evolution of plow cul-ture from hoe culture teak place in the Nile valle?!. Indeed weare here tracing in the gradually developing material basis oflife, a precess which bears the stamp of the Nile valley, and isunmstakably Nilotic throughout its course.Here then, so far as we can see, for the first time in thecareer of man. and at enly one point in the fringe of huntinglife which cnc.rcled the whole Mediterranean, there grew up atits southeast corner (Fig. 2) far back in the fifth millenniumbefore Christ. a community of Stone Age men who had grad-ually shifted from the hunting life to that of herdsmen andshepherds, plowmen and cultivators of the soil. While it mayhave reauired over six thousand acres to support a hunter andhis family a very few acres would maintain the grain-raising,cattle-ra'sing Stone Age family, and the population must havegreatly increased in numbers and in density. Such a body ofpopulation following the agricultural and cattle-breeding life atthe southeast corner of the Mediterranean must inevitably haveexerted an influence on surrounding populations. Such a dif-fusion as that which carried Central American culture traits

FIG. :34. A); 1


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4')~-I THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYway across the Mediterranean. The position of this contribu-tion in the long continued westward drift of culture will befound suggested later in Fig. 134.It now seems to be exceedingly probable, if not a demon-

strated fact also, that the south and west European communi-

FIG. :_{5. IJOi\ lESTIC AXDL\LN OF TilE- LIRL\.\":; C.\l"lTHED BY 'rI lE EnYl'TL\::\S. (28thcen tury B.C.) Com pa re a lso Fig, 24. (Aftpl' 1101'("11;1}'d1:.)

ties who inaugurated the Neolithic culture of Europe, were ofthe same race as the prehistoric peoples on the south side of theMediterranean, or at least as these Egyptians whom we find inthe earliest cemeteries. Giving all due consideration to thewide divergence of opinion among the physical anthropologists,it would seem that the studies of Elliot Smith among the largestseries of prehistoric Egyptian bodies yet investigated, havedemonstrated clearly the identity or close affinity between theseprehistoric Egyptians and the south Europeans of the greatpeninsulas, called by Sergi the Mediterranean race. As Smithhas shown in a restoration of a profile from an early pre-dynastic skull (Fig. 36), and as we see also in a late pre-


FlU. aG. PnOFILE OF ~\ l'IU>I-JrS'l'OHIC EGYPTIAX (ABOYE) HEwrOHED FIW:.\l AX EARLY1 'IH>DYNASl' IC Rrnn_,L BY Du. I JLL IOT S1I IITHJ ..:-\:\'D HE.\D OF A L.\'l'E: PRID-DYXASTICS~l '_ \_TUWI"rK (T' ho l at te r a f'ter Quihe lJ , "I-liel'ukonpolis.")dynastic statuette, the prehistoric Egyptians were a narrow-headed, long-faced, dark-haired, and almost certainly dark-eyed race. They were rather low in stature (the men a littleunder 5 feet 5 inches; the women almost 5 feet), and theywere of slender build. They were not negro or negroid, andtheir kin are to be found in Europe, rather than in Africa.


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42 9 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYItmust have been after a very long career as a settled agri-

cultural and cattle-raising people, that these dwellers on theNile alluvium discovered and began to use metal. Unlike thedomestication of grain and cattle, the introduction of metal washardly earlier than the dawn of civilization. We can thereforetrace the incoming of metal as we cannot follow the rise ofagriculture and cattle-breeding. The graves of our early ceme-teries (Fig. 22) disclose to us not merely cultivated grain anddomestic cattle, but also metal. For in the very earliest of thepredynastic graves we find copper needles with the eye pro-duced by bending the butt around in a hook-eye (Fig. 37).Copper beads and bracelets also show that the earliest use ofthe metal was chiefly for ornaments. These needles are theearliest implements of metal smelted and wrought by man; forthey carry this primitive and limited use of the metal back intothe fifth millennium B.C., that is back of 4000 B.C. Man thusbegan to smelt and use metal about six thousand years ago.

FIG. 37. COPPEl t NEEDLlDS \VITI-I I IOOK-EYE,S_ ,. T1-IE EARLIEST KNOWX I}IPL-K~IENTSOF ME'AL. Such needles are found in Egyptian graves dating before 4000 n.c.(After Reisner.)FIG.;{R THE E,AHLIEST KNOW~ ::UIil'I'ALT'OOLS : CHISELS OF COPPER POUND I ~ PHE~DYNAS~'IC EGYPTIA" GRAYES ABOC' 33TH CE~TURY B.C, (Photo by J'etrie.)

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 430Gradually the Nile-dwellers learned that the metal which

they were using for ornaments might be made into tools andweapons, giving them a new power over men and nature. Withtools and weapons like these (Fig. 38), which appear in thelate pre-dynastic graves by the middle of the fourth millenniumB.C., when all the world was elsewhere using only stone imple-ments and weapons, the life of man entered upon a new epochand at the southeastern corner of the Mediterranean a mechan-ically gifted people began to respond rapidly to the possessionof this new source of power. This response of an ingeniouspeople to the possession of metal culminated in the emergenceof a united nation, the first great social and administrativestructure erected by man, whose organized capacity was, halfa millennium later, to be expressed in monumental form in thepyramids of Gizeh.

The process of political unification which went on amongthe prehistoric petty kingdoms and chieftaincies distributedalong the Nile, is only dimly discernible in the scanty monu-ments surviving from this remote age. We see these earlyleaders bearing pointed metal weapons in the hunt, for theNile-dwellers continued their old hunting habits for thousandsof years after the rise of civilization. Monuments from themiddle of the fourth millennium show us the Nile chieftainsstill following the chase (Fig. 39). But even such a documentas this hunting scene (Fig. 39) also clearly discloses somethingof the vast social and governmental progress made by theearliest men, a progress which had carried them away fromreliance on the chase, toward the possession of a stable food

FIG. :1f>. AILE f 'J IJEV '1 '. \I?\S OF THE ::\11DDL1': OP ' rIl E FOURTH :.\IILLE8NIUIVI B.C.E~G. \GED I~ HU~TLG. Depic ted i n a rel ief on a slate palette. used for grin ding facepaint. (After Legge in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical clrcha:olo{JU, Vol. XXII.)


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4:11 THE SCIENTIFIC JlWNTHLY

FIG. 4(). A HOYAL HrccJ::'\o CEltlOIO:\,Y OF E.AHLY DY:,\ASTIC .\(;E DEPICTED I-:\" A HELJEFo: \' _ \_CEHI-::\f{),\.I.\L ~L\.(_T>1 En), (F'rrun Qulhell. "lIh:l'nko]jpoli~"")

supply available to large communities abiding in fixed dwellingplaces. These hunting chieftains carry standards on whichaxe mounted syrnb 'Is signifying political divisions-the earliestsuch symbols known. We recognize in them prehistoric formssome of which are well known to us in later hieroglyphic signs.Thus the fifth hunter in the upper line carries a symbol mean-

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 43 2ing "the East" in the hieroglyphic of half a millennium later.Each hunter also wears attached to his girdle behind, the tail ofa wild animal-a symbol retained in historic times only by thePharaoh.

One of the most powerful influences toward unity and organ-ized development in a rainless climate like that of Egypt, wasthe necessity of creating an ever more complicated irrigationsystem. To maintain such a system, to keep each of its longcanals free from obstruction, and to control the supply ofwater, required the cooperation of large groups of communi-ties, created a consciousness of community of interest and awillingness to submit to a central authority in control of thewhole. One of the ancient prehistoric rulers shown in Fig. 40beside a canal wielding an archaic wooden hoe, is evidentlyengaged in ceremonially digging up the earth, for which hisattendant holds a basket. Such a ceremonial act may wellhave marked the beginning or dedication of some irrigationcanal. Thus the possession of grain fields, and the maintenanceof herds which must be pastured, bound great groups of com-munities to a common system for the support of the whole,which could never have grown up among the hunting chieftainsof earlier days.

By the middle of the forty-third century B.C., this systemhad brought forth a calendar of twelve thirty-day months, andfive feast days at the end of the year. This is the calendarwhich has descended to us through the Romans, though itshould be observed that the Egyptian rulers were far too prac-tical to make a calendar which would oblige their people tolearn a verse of poetry in order to find out how many days therewere in a given month.


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I Rf'l'l'ilite:i tioin 'lui: BCIE:\TIYlC ~1():\TlILY, Dec-emlel', 1\ll~I,1



LECTURE ONEFROM THE OLD STONE AGE TO THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION. III~, UCH forces gradually brought about the union of two states~"J on the Nile: in the north a kingdom of the delta commonlyknown as Lower Egypt; and in the south a kingdom of thevalley above the delta, which we usually call Upper Egypt. Thekingdom of Upper Egypt was evidently the older. Side by sidethe two existed for centuries, each gaining its own traditions,symbols and insignia which survived in historic times for thou-sands of years. In early dynastic reliefs like Fig. 41, we see

FlU. -l l , THIf7: :)II 1I OF .\ Pl-'.\IL\OJ1 AT TilE I:EGr: :\ ""'I:: \(; ()P TIlE DY"\ :,:\ ~TrC ~\_Ci E. Onrho le ft tItt' king \\,(;11':-> rlu- whi!r - c -r -own or lTpIH']' Egyp,t: (,11 t ln- r ig ht (tilP H(llP,left end) he wears the spiral-crowned dlu d em of Lower Egypt. Helief SCEnf:S on arnagnHicent ceremonial palet te of slu t e. (From Ou ibel l , "Hi f'l 'fl konpol is. ")

the tall white crown worn by the prehistoric kings of UpperEgypt, and also the curious spiral-crowned red diadem whichregularly distinguished the King of Lower Egypt. In a pre-historic struggle which must have gone on for generations, theking of Upper Egypt, he of the tall white crown, conquered his

THE ORIGINS OF CIVlLIZA.TION 562northern rival of Lower Egypt, him of the curious red crownand united Egypt under one sovereignty. Thus probably notmore than a century after the middle of the fourth millenniumB.C., emerged the first great state in history. In commemora-tion of his double sovereignty over the two prehistoric king-doms, the Pharaoh, as we may begin to call him, assumed andwore the crowns of both states, as we see this king here doingon two different occasions. It is interesting to find him stillwearing the symbol of his hunting ancestry-the tail of a wildanimal appended to his girdle behind.

Such monuments as these show us how the prehistoric Egyp-tian system of picture signs was developing into phonetic writ-YI.g. The victory of this king over the enemy symbolized bythis snglo adversary whom he is shown dispatching (Fig. 41,right-hand relief), is commemorated in an archaic pictographicgroup over the head of the captive. The falcon (here with ahuman arm) is an enormously old symbol of the prehistoricruler of upper Egypt. Knowing this, we easily read the group;for it will be noticed that the falcon grasps a rope by which heleads a captive suggested by a human head with the rope fast-ened to the mouth. This head rises out of a stretch of levelground out of which are growing six lotus leaves on tall stemseach the symbol for 1000. Just below is a single barbed har-poon, and a small rectangle filled with wavy lines of water,meaning a pool or lake. The meaning of the whole is clear:"The Falcon King has led captive 6,000 men of the Land of theHarpoon Lake." The further process by which these purelypicture signs became phonetic, furnishing the earliest knownsystem of phonetic writing, is now fairly clear to us, but spacewill not permit its discussion here. It should be mentioned,however, that before 3000 B.C. this system of Egyptian writingdeveloped a complete series of consonantal alphabetic signs, andthere is now no reason to doubt that the Phoenician alphabet,and hence likewise our own, have descended from the picturewriting of Egypt which we have just read. This question willbe taken up more fully in discussing the Phrenicians.It is of importance at this point to remember that the ex-clusively Nilotic origin of Egyptian writing is easily demon-strable. In view of this fact it is quite inexplicable that thereshould have been a wide-spread impression that it was ofAsiatic origin. In the first place our oldest examples of Egyp-tian writing are older than the earliest known writing of Asia.Furthermore Egyptian writing is a veritable zoological andbotanical garden of fauna and flora unmistakably Nilotic,while it includes also an extensive museum of implements, ap-


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56 3 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYpliances, weapons, clothing, adornments, buildings, etc., pecu-liar to the Nile valley. Only lack of acquaintance with thematerial background of Egyptian life, and a failure to studycarefully the content of the Egyptian sign lists, can account forthe totally groundless. assertion of the Asiatic origin ofEgyptianwriting by Hommel and de Morgan, which has unfortunatelyfound its way into many current books. As his writing devel-oped, the Egyptian at the same time devised the earliest knownpaper, which he succeeded in making from the papyrus reed

FIG. 42. SPECL\lES OF EC:YJTI.\:\ l '. \l 'YHCS 1 '. \I E I! , CO: .' \' 1' .\ fKI :- \fO 1'.\1:1' (H A T,\LEWHIT'l'R:\ XK\1tLY ::WOO B.C. Now in the Berlin ~Ins('um.

(Cuperus papYTUS) , a plant which grew very plentifully in theNile marshes (Fig. 42). Ithas especial interest for us, be-cause it was the first paper used by Europe, and as we shall see,this paper brought to Europe an alphabet which had grown upout of the system of Egyptian hieroglyphic of which we havejust been speaking. .

Thus emerged the first great organization of men, efficientin the possession of a system of written records and communi-cation and stably founded on a basis of agriculture and cattlebreedi~g, prepared to exploit to the full the possession o~metaltools. Itwas now that the kingship proved invaluable III fur-nishing the powerful organization for mining on a large scalewhich private initiative could not have furnished. The sourceof copper was in the Peninsula of Sinai.

Berthelot has remarked= how interesting it is, that prob-ably at the beginning of the exploitation of these mines of

20" Sur les mines de cuivre du Sinai," Com.pt.e rendus de l'Acaderniedes Sciences, 19 Aug., 1896.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 5tH

FIt;. -l-}. OS1 :; OF TIlE E.\ JtLY ((l l'PElt , :\ II .: q;s L\ R1. .\ '. \1 \ \'OI tKELJ By THE .\:\CIE:.'\TE(;Yl'TL\XS. (I'lloiogl'ilVh by Petl'ie.)

Sinai, that is over six thousand years ago, by an empiricism theorigin of which is easy to conceive, man had already gained theprocesses for smelting metal, which have been followed eversince even down into our own day. Only recently have themetallurgical chemists succeeded in devising processes moresuccessful and efficient than those which were first devised inSinai over six thousand years ago.

This remark of Berthelot's justifies us in picturing the ex-perience of some wandering Egyptian back in the fifth millen-nium B.C. as he banked his fire with pieces of copper ore whichhappened to be lying about his camp-part of the talus anddetritus which encumbers the base of the cliffs in the lonelyvalleys of Sinai. As these natural fragments were exposed tothe fire, the charcoal of the wood blaze, together with the heat,reduced a portion of the ore, and we can easily imagine howthe attention of the wanderer would be attracted by a glitteringglobule of the liberated metal as it rolled out among the ashes.

The new age of mankind born on that memorable day wasbeginning to enter on its birthright, when centuries later theEgyptian monarchy emerged in the middle of the fourth millen-nium B.C. The metal, which the first Egyptian who possessedit had gained by accident, was now to be won systematicallyand on a relatively large scale, as only the sovereign could doin that distant age, when individual initiative was unequal to


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56 5 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYthe task. In Fig. 44 we see one of the ancient Egyptian minesin Sinai visible high up on the right. Though this particularexample is not one of the earliest, these mines of SinaiticMaghara are the oldest known mines in the world. Below themine on a slight elevation at the foot of the slope we see thestone huts of the miners. A protective wall extends trans-versely across the valley. Here lived a little colony of miners.Plentiful evidences of their work are still scattered about theplace. Under the floor of the hut they concealed the potterycanteen with which they carried on their rough-and-readyhousekeeping, and there Petrie found it in his investigation ofthe place (Fig. 45). Their copper tools have likewise beenfound covered by rubbish (Fig. 46). The heavy stone pickswhich they still employed in getting out the ore, have likewisebeen found on the spot (Fig. 47).The interiors of the mines themselves are very instructive.The action of the copper tools on the wall of the drift can stillbe closely followed and exhaustively examined, even to deter-

F'IG. 43. P0'l"l'EH'i CA~Tl;g:;.;OF A-'\CIE::\T F:GYPTIA~ :IU \"_EIRS. Found burred under thefloor of their hut in Sinai. (}laghnr,,; ph o togrn ph by Pet.rie.)

PIG. 46. COPPEl{ CHISELS E~IPLOYED BY ~\i\CIE~T EGyrTLL\ }I1::'\EllS 1.:\ SIX AI.(Serabi t; pho t ogrupu by Pc tr ie. )

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION 56 6

FIG. -17. flEASY STO);E PICKS A);"D STO);I:: DUILL'HE"\D FOC:\O ~\T .A::\CIXT EGYPTl.\~COPPER 'II"J.;S rx SI"AI. (Photogrnph by Pet rie.)

mining the width of the chisel edge (Fig. 48). Though themines are not usually large, and do not commonlv exceed fivefeet in height, Fig. 49 shows a chamber of spacious dimensions.Space does not permit discussing the methods of freeing andtaking out the ore; but we may glance at the evidences whichdisclose the smelting process. It is clear that smelting wasoften done directly at the mine. Petrie found the heavy stonepounders by means of which the ore was crushed (Fig. 50).Masses of slag have also been uncovered, and in Fig. 51 we see

FIG. 4 8. 'Y. \J .L sr~()WIXG RTHO}(E~ OF COl l EH ( I! I~EL 1:\' .\X( IES l E/;YPTJAX CUl'llER:\11);}


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50'j THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYa pottery crucible with large nozzle for pouring the moltenmetal into forms." ...The copper-bearing minerals which these earliest minerssmelted were chiefly of three kinds: turquoise, containing onlyabout three and a third per cent. of oxide of copper; a hydro-silicate of copper; and finally certain granites impregnatedwith carbonate and hydrosilicate of copper. These granitesare also poor ore, but the hydrosilicate is sometimes very richin copper ."

FIG. 40. L" ': 'I 'EHI()l { OF A LAHGE COl'l'ER ~II);"E ,VORKED BY '111'1A:-;-CUJ;\T F~GYPTIAKS INSISCAL (Serabl t; pho togl 'i lph by Pet ri e. )

The decisive importance of these mines in Sinai is evidentwhen we understand that they are definitely dated. For overtwo thousand years the Pharaohs exploited the Sinai copperregions and have left their records on the rocks around themines to testify to the fact. These records begin in the thirty-fourth century and continue until the latter part of the twelfthcentury B.C. Itis not a little impressive at the present day tosee appearing on the rocks before us the figure of the first rulerof men who has put himself on record as having organized andsent forth his people to bring out of the earth the metallic re-

21 The above discussion of the ancient mines of Sinai is much indebtedto the text and photographs of Petri,", " Sinai."

22 See Berthelot, ibid.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION

FIG. GO . S'l iO:;\E POU::\DEHS FOB CHCSIlIXG COl'PK.R OUE {JSEJ) BY 'I' IlE ;\: \{ 'IE::\T Ef;YPT-IA:


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THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYthus published to the natives of western Asia his sovereigntyover the world's earliest copper mines. He wears here the offi-cial crowns, the white and the red, which signify his supremacyover the Two Egypts, a supremacy which he had thus extendedover neighboring Asia in the 34th century B.C. Thus theearliest known autocracy, seizing the mineral-bearing regionsof Asia which it needed, some 5,300 years ago, began that longcareer of aggression based on economic grounds, which con-tinuing ever since culminated in the seizure of the mineralwealth of northern France in August, 1914.

This record of Egyptian conquest in metallurgy, let it benoted, consists of inscriptional as well as sculptured elements.The name of the king in Egyptan hieroglyphics of unmistakableNilotic origin, accompanies his figure, and it is well to remem-ber that this mining record, made after Egypt had known ofcopper for over half a millenium, is nevertheless several cen-turies older than the oldest dated piece of copper known in Asia.

This earliest family of sovereigns ruling over a people ofseveral millions was founded about 3400 B.C. by Menes, thefirst of the Pharaohs. His home was at Thinis, near Abydosin Upper Egypt, below the great bend where the river ap-proaches most nearly to the Red Sea. We call the wholegroup the First Dynasty, and together with the second group,or second Dynasty, these early dynastic kings of Egypt were

{-'11;, ; - ) : . ! . HELIEl-' c\L \" :n 0:\ Hl)t'KS .\ T Ti lE ,\.\(IE.\T E~_~Y l' TL \' \ (OPPEl t -:\I1:.,\E;-::I:::\ SJ~_\I (_~L \(~ 1L \. _IL\ )) IX ' I llE T II IJ lTY-FOCH l 'l l CL'lTHl 1.1.(. It shows the figure oft l u - P , l r l i c : _ ; . ; i - k n o w n m i n ig I J l ' O m 0 1 P l ' . K i n g ~ e ! l l ( - , l ' - k h e t or Egypt. ..A.1- Ow l e f t h esrnires a Bcdw i chief of the region, while his other t\VO portrutt s d ispluy him oncewith t.h crown of "CrJIWl' and ngnin with the crown of Lower ggypt. This is theolrlost lrls t orlcnl monument known. and the (.liuliest such record of n fOl'E'ign conquestOIl n liou soil. (L'hot og ru p h by Pot rfc.)

THE ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION ,570

FI(L 0-4-. HJ::! l \~Lr'"\Ej) Tn :: \I B ( IL\ .. \Il :J


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57 1 THE SCIENTIPIC ,lI!.ONTHLYtombs, we owe the rescue of what was left, to Petrie's efforts.He was able to save enough of the palace furniture and otherroyal equipment placed in these tombs for the use of the royaldead in the hereafter, to disclose to us the remarkable prog-ress of this earliest state in material life, especially in arts, in-dustries and craftsmanship, during the last four centuries ofthe fourth millennium B.C., that is about 3400 to 3000 B.C.

I-;Hl. j(i. EGYPTIAN CRANK DRILL I:-;\"EXTED I~ T-IIE BARLY DYNASTIC PI~HIOD("\Boerr- :~-t-oo -ro Boon HC.), Ti,E E.\U.JEHT I~\I)W~ -:\lACll1~E. (Drnwn by Borcbal'otfrom a bieroglyph .)

The advance in industrial appliances of which the jewelryin Fig. 55 gives evidence, is illustrated by a very importantdevice for drilling out stone vessels, which was invented in theearly dynastic period (Fig. 56). It is elaborately drawn forus in hieroglyphic, in which it became the sign for" craftsman."It consists of a vertical shaft with a crank attached at the top,and forked at the base to receive a cutting edge in the form ofa sharp stone. Just below the crank are attached two stone

THE ORIGINS OP CIVILIZATION

FIn. ,)7. EC;YPl'L\S C1L\FTS.:\IJ-::\ E:'\(;. \(;EI) 1:\ J)HLLJX(~ 01''1' STU);E \E;-;SELS \VTHTilE CHA::-;:KDiur.r, SEE~ IX FIG. tltL ' I'he scene i taken from a tomb relief. Themcroglyphs between the two workmen record their conversation. One says: "Thisis a very beautiful vase." Tile ot her responds: '_'It is indeed." (F'rom de Morgrm,"H(_: .e he l' che s s ur I es origf nos de l'_I;:gypte,'! 1.)

weights, like the two balls of a steam governor. These ofcourse serve as a fly wheel to keep the shaft revolving. Here isthe earliest machine which can fairly be called such. It dis-plays the earliest known crank or crank-driven shaft. Theresult was superb stone vessels and the development of a newand highly refined craft (Fig. 57).

Stimulated perhaps by his rival who was producing suchbeautiful stone vases, the potter at this time also made a greatadvance in his ancient art. For ages, since his ancestors of thelower alluvium, who already lay buried many feet below thepotter's yard, he had laboriously built up his vessels by hand.But now he perfected what was perhaps at fi-rst merely a re-volving bench, till it emerged as the familiar potter's wheel, theancestor of the lathe, upon which his clay vessels were nowturned.

Thus before 3000 B.C. Egyptian craftsmen devised two re-volving machines, involving the essential principle of the wheel,with a vertical axis; but the wheel as a burden-bearina devicewith a horizontal axis (unless as employed in the pulley block?)did not arise in Egypt. Itwas first used in Asia. On the basisof these devices, and a long list of metal tools highly specialized,there arose a large group of sharply differentiated crafts, amongwhich was the important art of glaze-making, the forerunnerof the first production of glass. All these crafts were carriedon by the first great body of industrial population known inhistory. They were in existence before 3000 B.C.

The great African game preserve at the southeast corner of


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573 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYthe Mediterranean, which once supported only detached groupsof hunters wandering through the jungle, had become a hugesocial laboratory, where these Stone Age hunters had beentransformed first into plowmen and shepherds and then intohandicraftsmen. In the course of this process civilization aroseand gained a stable political basis in the thousand years between4000 and 3000 B.C.

Thus supported upon an economic foundation of agriculture,animal husbandry and manufacturing industries, arose the firstgreat state on the Mediterranean, indeed the first great statein the world, at a time when all the rest of mankind was stilll iving in Stone Age barbarism. Such a stable fabric of organi-zation, under the power of the old falcon chieftain, once ruleronly of Upper Egypt, but now sole head of all the Egyptianpeople, had shifted man from a struggle with exclusively naturalforces, into a new arena where he must thenceforth contendwith social forces, and out of his crucible of social strugglewere to issue new values of a different order, like social justice,the value of right conduct, and hopes of happiness beyond thegrave based upon worthy character-conceptions in which theNile dwellers were as far in advance of the world about themas they were in their conquest of the material world.

This extraordinary forward movement of man before 3000B.C. in the vicinity of the junction between the two continents,Africa and Eurasia, could not go on without important effectson the advance of man in Western Asia. It is evident that heretoo man had been pushing forward since Paleolithic times, andhis ultimate progress in the whole region around the easternend of the Mediterranean and down the Tigris-Euphrates valleywas to have a profound influence on the career of man in theMediterranean and thus upon the course of general humanhistory.

The chronological relations of the cultures on the Nile andthe Euphrates have not yet been definitely determined. Justas in the case of Egypt, so with regard to Babylonia, the ex-cessively remote dates once current have been shown to be un-tenable. They have been given wide currency by de Morganand others. De Morgan bases his conclusions upon two bodiesof evidence. First the chronology once drawn from the writtendocuments; and second his own excavations at Susa, the lead-ing town in the old Elamite country on the east of Babylonia.Dr. King of the British Museum long ago discovered evidencewhich showed that the chronology drawn from the writtendocuments which dated King Sargon of Akkad in the thirty-eighth century B.C. was impossible. De Morgan's distinguished


countryman, Thureau-Dangin, has only in the last few monthspu~lishe~ ~ conclusive reconstruction, leaving nothing to bedesIred. m .ItS finality-a reconstruction which places Sargonwell this SIde of 2800 and our earliest written documents ofBabylonia hardly earlier than the thirty-first century B.C.

As to de Morgan's earliest periods at Susa, he dates themby their relative depth, that is by the amount of accumulatedrubbish over them. Such rubbish produced by the detrition orviolent destruction of sun-dried brick buildings, will of courseaccumulate at a rate variable from site to site and country toco.untry, .dep~nding. on a wide range of height of the buildings,wId~I~ differ-ing thickness of the walls, the varying rapidity ofdetrition caused by the differing amount of rainfall and theuncertain number of the successive violent destructions. Fol-lowing de Morgan, R. Pumpelly has made similar calculationsfor the age of the lower strata in his excavations of the ancientcity of Anau in Turkestan. Among other data as a basis, heto?k the ve~y sl.ow accun:ulati~n of such rubbish in Egypt,WIthout taking into considemtion the difference in rainfall(E_gy.pthaving ~ractically none), the difference in height ofbuildings and thickness of walls, and the politically shelteredsituation of Upper Egyptian cities which exposed them to less


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THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYfrequent destruction than the cities of Asia." Such calcula-tions have no value.

The development of civilized man on the lower Euphrateshad undoubtedly been going on for ages before the date of hisearliest surviving written documents (thirty-first century B.C.),but the age of that development has yet to be established; forunfortunately the prehistoric stages of Babylonian culture havenot yet been recovered.The river terraces of the Euphrates, such as we see in Fig.60 overlooking a beautiful island, have not been investigatedgeologically, paleontologically or archeologically at all. It isevident that man dwelt between the Euphrates and the Mediter-ranean in Paleolithic times, His remains and his stone imple-ments may therefore lie under and along these Euphrates ter-races as they do along the Nile. They have indeed been foundin Palestine and along the Phoenician coast, in caves, so strati-fied as to leave no doubt of their Paleolithic origin. From theseearly until the earliest written documents on the Baby-lonian alluvium (about thirty-first century B.C.), we have noevidence for the course of the development in western Asia.It is, 110,72,'8r, already perfectly clear that while the Nile

valley made the earlier advance, and was the earliest home ofcivilization, there was reciprocal influence between the twoearly cultures on the Nile and the Euphrates. Thus the mace~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - '

FIG. 61 . EGYI"rL\::\ AXD BABYLc)~IA~ ::\L\CI>HE ..DS OF THE SA:\IE FOID t.

Itmay be added that Dr. Hubert Schmidt, the able archeologista ttached to the Anau excavations, da ted the oldest remains found there atabout 2000 B.C.


PIU. G2 . EGYPTL\X . .. :\ "D B.\BYLO: :\ IAX CfLI :: \l )]~H SE. \LS UF TliE S.A: :_ \IEFUJDI .

head which we find in Egypt far back in the fourth millenniumB.C. is also found along the Euphrates many centuries later(Fig. 61). Similarly the cylinder seal employed for sealingclay is found on the Nile centuries earlier than our earliestBabylonian example of it (Fig. 62). The decorative arrange-ment of balanced animal figures (Fig. 63), especially with ahuman figure in the middle, is found on the Nile well back

l '; IG. 63. EGY1'TIA:K . \XD BAnYLO~L\ .: \' DECOIL\ 'l 'I \' F. DESIG~S. ~Iac1e up of nuimalngures bn lunccd nntitiletienIly on eith er side of n human iigul'e.


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577 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLYtoward 4000 B.C., and our earliest examples in Babylonia cannotbe dated earlier than the thirty-second century B.C. In suchmatters it should be remembered, however, that an inferiorcivilization often makes contributions to a superior culture. Wehave only to remember the source of tobacco, maize, potatoesand the like to illustrate this fact. There will, therefore, havebeen mutual exchange between the Nile and the Euphrates at avery remote date, and some of these parallels here exhibited maybe examples of such mutual interchange.

This process created a great Egypto-Babylonian culturenucleus on both sides of the inter-continental bridge connectingAfrica and Eurasia. It brought forth the earliest civilizationin the thousand years between 4000 and 3000 B.C., while all therest of the world continued in Stone Age barbarism or savagery.Then after 3000 B.C. began the diffusion of civilization from theEgypto-Babylonian culture center. The best illustration ofwhat then took place is furnished by our own New World. Inonly two places on the globe have men advanced unaided fromStone Age barbarism to the possession of agriculture, metal andwriting. One of these centers is that which we have been study-ing here in the OldWorld; the other is here in the New World.>Just as the Egypto-Babylonian culture center grew up at thejunction between the two continents, Africa and Eurasia, as theoldest and the original center of civilization in the Old World,so here in the New World the oldest and original center ofcivilization likewise developed along and on each side of theinter-continental bridge. The far-reaching labors of a greatgroup of Americanists have shown clearly that from this cul-ture center in the inter-continental region of the Western Hemi-sphere a process of diffusion of civilization went on northwardand southward into the two continents of the New World, andthat process was still going on when the period of discovery andcolonization began. That which we accept as a matter of courseas we study the New World center, was obviously going on forthousands of years around the Old World center, although aprovincially minded classicism has blinded the world to thefacts. It remains for us in the next lecture, therefore, to followthe lines of culture diffusion, diverging from the Egypto-Baby-Ionian group and stimulating Europe and inner Asia to risefrom Stone Age barbarism to civilization.

24 See the present wri ter's article, "The Place of the Near Orient inthe Career of Man, and the Task of the American Oriental ist" (presiden-t ial address before the American Orienta l Society, in Journ. of the Am.Or. Soc., June, 1919).

VOL.VII.-:n

I-N

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LECTURE TWOTHE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION AND ITS TRANSITION TO EUROPE

We have seen how the Stone Age hunters of the Nile grad-ually gained agriculture, domestic a

Documents

Breasted Origins of Civilization