Carroll Quigley - The Evolution of Civilizations

The earliest civilizations are to be found neither in the maize group nor in the rice group, but in the much more important group of "grain civilizations." This group is more important not only because it contains the first civilizations to come into existence but also because it contains such a large number of civilizations, seventeen at least. The earliest civilizations were derived from a number of closely related producing societies that we shall call the Neolithic Garden cultures, or, less accurately, the Painted Pottery Peoples. The latter were the first peoples to have agriculture, and thus formed the earliest producing societies in history. At the risk of considerable oversimplification, we might say that these earliest agriculturalists appeared in the hilly terrain of western Asia, probably not far from Armenia, about nine thousand years ago. Because they knew nothing about replenishing the fertility of the soil, they practiced "shifting cultivation," moving to new fields when yields declined in their old fields. In consequence, they expanded steadily, reaching Denmark and Britain in the west and China in the east before 2000 B.C., that is to say, within five thousand years. In the course of this movement they found, in various alluvial river valleys, sites adapted to permanent large-scale settlement because, in such valleys, the annual flood replenished the fertility of the soil by depositing a layer of fertile sediment; and, accordingly, the need for "shifting cultivation" ended and the possibility of permanent, eventually urban, settlements was offered. This possibility was realized in four alluvial valleys of the Old World, in Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium B.C., in the valley of the Nile shortly afterward, in the valley of the Indus River early in the fourth millennium B.C., and in the Huang Ho Valley of China late in the third millennium B.C. The last of these has already been mentioned as the source of the Sinic civilization, which was the parent of the Chinese, Japanese, and probably other Far Eastern civilizations.

The first civilization, known to us as the Sumerian or Mesopotamian civilization, began after 6000 B.C., reached a peak of achievement about 1700 B.C., and ended in a series of empires of which the last was the Persian. That empire and the civilization of which it was the political aspect were destroyed by outside invaders, the Greeks under Alexander the Great, after the end of the fourth century. Parallel with this, a quite different civilization in the Nile Valley reached its peak about 2300 B.C., established its greatest geographic extent as the Egyptian Empire a millennium later, and was destroyed by the same Greek invaders in the few generations following 330 B.C.

While this was going on, other civilizations appeared, flourished, culminated in their respective empires, and perished at the hands of outside invaders in a strikingly similar process. In the Indus Valley the Indie civilization began about 3500 B.C., reached a peak of achievement about 2200 B.C., culminated in a political empire that we might call the Harappa Empire, and was destroyed by the Aryan invaders who came into the Indian subcontinent from the northwest after 1700 B.C. From the wreckage of this culture, there was constructed a quite distinct civilization, which we may call Hindu. This reached a peak of achievement about 100 B.C., and culminated in a series of empires of which the last, called the Mogul Empire, was established early in the sixteenth century. This empire and the civilization of which it formed a part were destroyed by European invaders in the centuries following 1700. From the wreckage of this Hindu civilization a new civilization seems to be coming into existence in our own time.

Returning to the Nearer East we can see that a number of different civilizations appeared there, largely from Mesopotamian inspiration. On the island of Crete, the earliest civilization outside an alluvial valley began to form toward the end of the fourth millennium B.C. It reached its peak in the Minoan period, about 1500 B.C., and ended with the Mycenaean Empire, destroyed by the Dorian invaders in the twelfth century B.C.

In Anatolia, in the second millennium B.C., rose and fell the shortest-lived of all civilizations. Known as the Hittite civilization, this had its beginnings after 2000 B.C., reached its widest imperial extent about 1300, and perished a few generations later from the onslaughts of invading Iron Age intruders, cousins of the Dorians who were simultaneously destroying Cretan civilization.

In the Levant, during the same period, there appeared, under Mesopotamian stimulus, a civilization we might call Canaanite. Beginning before 2000 B.C., it reached its greatest extent, from the Red Sea to Spain, about 900 B.C., and ended with that empire which, called Punic by the Romans and Carthaginian by us, was known to themselves, more accurately, as Canaanite. It perished from Roman invasion before 100 B.C.

From the wreckage of Cretan civilization there began to grow, about 1000 B.C., a new civilization with which we are well acquainted. Known as Classical civilization, or Mediterranean civilization from the sea whose shores it occupied, it reached its greatest peak in the century divided at 400 B.C., and finally culminated in the Roman Empire. It was destroyed, as is generally known, by the Germanic "barbarian invaders" in the fifth century of our era. From its wreckage emerged three civilizations: (a) Western civilization, which may culminate in an American empire; (b) Orthodox civilization, which seems to be culminating in the Soviet empire; and (c) Islamic civilization, which did culminate in the Ottoman Empire, and was disrupted by intruders from Western civilization in the first half of the present century.

In this enumeration we have named sixteen civilizations. Of these, two existed in the New World, three in the Far East, one in Africa, and the others in the rest of Eurasia. With careful study it would be possible to distinguish approximately eight more civilizations divided about equally between the Near East and the Far East. We refrain from attempting to do this because the facts are not clear and any conclusions would be disputable. The Near East and the Far East in the history of civilizations are like complex masses of quartz from which numerous crystals protrude in various directions. The number of crystals in the mass might be disputed, and there would surely be disagreement about which portions of the main mass of quartz should be attributed to each crystal. It is possible that detailed study of the problem, like microscopic examination of the quartz, might help to solve this problem, but for our purpose the task is not worth the effort. Just as it is possible for adjacent molecules in the quartz mass to be oriented in diverse directions so that they should, perhaps, be attributed to different crystals, so it is possible (and indeed is well established) that individual persons living next to each other in, let us say, Palestine in the thirteenth century B.C., should from their personal orientations be attributed to Hittite civilization or to Egyptian civilization or to Canaanite civilization or even to Mesopotamian civilization. Such attribution of individuals to civilizations is no matter of any historical significance and need not concern us here. Nor need we worry, at this time, about the eight or more additional civilizations that have existed at various times in Ethiopia, Cambodia, Indonesia, or Tibet. Let us study the nature of civilizations, as a scientist would study the nature of crystals, by examining the more clearly demarked and less controversial examples of our subject.

Leaving aside for the moment the two civilizations found in the New World, we can arrange the fourteen Old World civilizations into a pattern to show their chief cultural connections. Many other connections, which we do not show on the diagram, exist in fact and can be inserted by the cognizant reader. It is to be noted that four of the early civilizations are cultural descendants of the Neolithic Garden cultures, which were not themselves civilizations (since they lacked both writing and city life):