Till now, mankind has either taken it as a matter of course that it is going to survive, or, alternatively, assumed that its destiny will be decided by forces beyond human control: the gods or God or Nature. We have now woken up to the truth that, today, we are in greater danger of extinction than we have been at any time since the date —perhaps 30,000 years ago—at which our ancestors gained the upper hand over all other forms of life on this planet except microbes and viruses. In the present age we have discovered and conquered the microbes, and we have hopes of getting the better of the viruses. But our recent victories over non-human menaces to human life are far outweighed by new threats to us from ourselves. These threats have no precedents; for man, armed with the power of science applied to technology, is a vastly more formidable enemy for man than any non-human enemy that man has yet encountered.

Approach.: The subject of this talk is in one sense a rather personal one. I am venturing to say something about my own approach to History. I had the good fortune to be born just not too late to come in for the old-fashioned ‘Early Modern Western’ education in the Greek and Latin languages and literatures; the first grown-up job that I did was to teach Greek and Roman history for the School of Literae Humaniores at Oxford; and, in afterwards exploring other provinces of history, I have always found my way into them through a Greek gate. Greek history has been, for me, the key to world history.

The Basin of the Rivers Oxus and Jaxartes (which may be regarded as a single unit from the geographical as well as the historical point of view) has several times over played a particular part in the world's history. In conjunction with its complement, the Basin of the Tarim, it has served as a corridor or line of communication between the home-lands of several independent civilizations. By this route; the Middle Eastern World (and the Mediterranean World behind it) has communicated with India, and both India and the Middle East (sometimes alternately and, less often, simultaneously) with the Far Eastern World of China, Korea, and Japan.

If you walk out of modern Sparta by the Tripolis road, and take the first branch road to the right after crossing Eurotas, you find yourself moving parallel to the river, with a line of red bluffs on your left hand. The bluffs grow higher and steeper as you go south, and the river edges closer to their foot, till opposite the junction of the Magoula river there is barely room for the cart-track between hillside and Eurotas-bed: but here the line of the bluffs is suddenly broken by a dry ravine converging on the course of the Eurotas at an acute angle from the N.E. The flanks of this ravine are at first as steep as the western face of the bluffs: but after about ten minutes' walk up it, several bays open on the left, affording an ascent to the bluff's summit by an easier gradient. When you reach the top you find yourself on a narrow ridge crowned by a chapel of the prophet Elias, and clearly marked off from the other summits to N. and S. Just N. of the chapel is the shrine of Menelaos, where the citizens of ‘historical’ Sparta used to offer lead figurines. But under the ‘historical’ stratum are the vestiges of a ‘Mycenaean’ city.