SOURCES AND GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD

Towards the middle of the fourth millennium B.C., civilization in the plain of the Euphrates and the Tigris was not dissimilar to that of western Asia in general, as described in the foregoing chapters. Everywhere we find farmers and stock-breeders, in possession of all the requisite crafts, obtaining a few commodities from abroad, and little given to change. Similar peasant cultures—settled, stagnant and uncentralized—existed in Neolithic times throughout Europe and Asia, and continued to exist there for centuries after the ancient Near East had evolved a more complex mode of life, and had, through the diffusion of metallurgy, brought about an improvement in the equipment of the populations of Asia and Europe. If we judge by their remains, these people do not appear inferior to the early inhabitants of the ancient Near East and of Egypt described in chapters vii–ix above. We cannot explain why the latter set out on a course which led to achievements surpassing all that had gone before. In prehistoric times the future centres of high civilization showed no signs of being exceptional. On the contrary, each of them formed part of a larger cultural province: Egypt shared its early pre-dynastic civilization with Libya, Nubia and perhaps the Sudan; northern Mesopotamia was at first indistinguishable from north Syria; southern Mesopotamia was intimately linked with Persia. It was the unprecedented development described in this and the preceding chapter which differentiated Egypt and Mesopotamia from their surroundings, as it also established their unique historical significance.