The Dawn of Civilization
All things must have a beginning, and so it was with the earth and the people who have lived on it for countless generations. Scientists who have studied the rock layers, or strata, of the earth’s outer crust believe the earth is approximately 4.7 billion years old. In the strata of the earth are found the evidence of the origin of life forms, their changes, and development. Fossils, or hardened remains, which have been preserved in the strata, show that living things went through many changes during the passage of millions of years—from simple forms to more complex and advanced beings.
The oldest known manlike beings lived nearly 2 million years ago. Evidence indicates that they could stand erect and walk on two feet, and could make tools. They may have been modern man’s direct ancestors. True, or modern, man evolved over a long period of time. He grew skilled in using his hands and in making tools; the size of his brain increased and in learning to talk he developed a language. The problem of survival was acute for early man. At first he was relatively helpless before the forces of nature. He had little in the way of weapons, tools, and clothing, and his food supply was uncertain. Life was often short and violent. In order to survive, man had to learn how to master his environment.
Then, as now, man had certain basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, protection from enemies, forms of government to make group living possible, and religious beliefs to explain the mysteries of birth, death, and the hereafter. How people satisfy their wants—the various ways they produce food, build shelter, organize their families, create systems of government, worship their gods, and engage in many other forms of human activity—is called their culture. In this sense, culture has nothing to do with being “cultured”—that is, well-educated and refined. People possess a culture whether they are Indians in house dwellers in Paris.
Stone Age man learned to make simple stone tools and weapons, use fire, and fashion clothes. He also experimented with art forms, such as cave paintings, and began to have ideas about religion. Very slowly, after the passage of thousands of years, man developed new skills. He learned to work metals and to make pottery. He domesticated animals to assure a meat supply and planted seeds in the ground to produce crops. These developments, particularly those dealing with his food supply, gave man a significant degree of control over his environment. No longer did he have to wander about collecting berries and roots. He ceased to be a nomad and could live in one place with many of his fellows. Thus the human community was born. In studying Stone Age man, scholars refer to the prehistoric period, by which is meant the span of time before the invention of writing when there were no records and hence no history.
About 4000 B.C. living conditions advanced so substantially in the river valleys of the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris-Euphrates in Asia Minor that civilization was achieved and the historic period began. The stage of development called civilization is reached when human culture becomes complex enough to include a system of writing, vocational specialization in a number of crafts, a single government affording protection and enforcing its own law, and cities. In short, it is a stage when men possess an extensive control over their environment. The Egyptians built a remarkable civilization.
The tomb painting of a religious ceremony reproduced at the beginning of this unit shows that more than 3000 years ago the people of Egypt had advanced ideas of religion and well-developed techniques of art. In addition, they had developed hieroglyphic writing and possessed the necessary engineering skills to build impressive structures. In the river valley of the Tigris- Euphrates and in adjacent areas of the Near East, many different peoples took part in the advance of civilization: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Hittites, and Persians. The Hebrew contributions were especially noteworthy: the idea of a single, all-powerful, and just God and the Old Testament, which described His works.
People today tend to overlook the immense debt owed to the men of the ancient world. They began the long struggle to conquer the forces of nature and to solve basic social and technical problems. In an important sense the first hatchet, the first written message, and the first seed planted in the ground to produce wheat were more significant in the story of human development than such awe-inspiring modern inventions as the atomic bomb, the electronic computer, and the space rocket.
