CULTURAL “RECEPTIVENESS” AND PROMISING ENVIRONMENTS
Until the archeologists and the natural scientists—botanists, geologists, zoologists, and general ecologists—have spent many more years on the problem, we shall not have full how and why answers. I do think, however, that we are beginning to understand what to look for.
We shall have to learn much more of what makes the cultures of men “receptive” and experimental. Did change in the environment alone force it? Was it simply a case of Professor Toynbee’s “challenge and response?” I cannot believe the answer is quite that simple. Were it so simple, we should want to know why the change hadn’t come earlier, along with earlier environmental changes. We shall not know the answer, however, until we have excavated the traces of many more cultures of the time in question. We shall doubtless also have to learn more about, and think imaginatively about, the simpler cultures still left today. The “mechanics” of culture in general will be bound to interest us.
It will also be necessary to learn much more of the environments of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In which regions of the world were the natural conditions most promising? Did this promise include plants and animals which could be domesticated, or did it only offer new ways of food-collecting? There is much work to do on this problem, but we are beginning to get some general hints.
Before I begin to detail the hints we now have from western Asia, I want to do two things. First, I shall tell you of an old theory as to how food-production might have appeared. Second, I will bother you with some definitions which should help us in our thinking as the story goes on.