The Story of Evolution

by Joseph McCabe

If we take first a broad view of the later course of civilisation we see at a glance the general relation of east and west. Some difficulty would arise, if we pressed, as to the exact stage in which a nation may be said to become "civilised," but we may follow the general usage of archaeologists and historians. They tell us, then, that civilisation first appears in Egypt about 8000 B.C. (settled civilisation about 6000 B.C.), and in the Mesopotamian region about 6000 B.C. We next find Neolithic culture passing into what may be called civilisation in Crete and the neighbouring islands some time between 4000 and 3000 B.C., or two thousand years after the development of Egyptian commerce in that region. We cannot say whether this civilisation in the AEgean sea preceded others which we afterwards find on the Asiatic mainland. The beginning of the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor, and of Phoenician culture, is as yet unknown. But we can say that there was as yet no civilisation in Europe. It is not until after 1600 that civilisation is established in Greece (Mycenae and Tiryns) as an offshoot of AEgean culture. Later still it appears among the Etruscans of Italy—to which, as we know, both Egyptian and AEgean vessels sailed. In other words, the course of civilisation is very plainly from east to west.

But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting. The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile shores was the appointed field of expansion. The land route from Egypt lay, not to the dreary west in Africa, but along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Syria and Asia Minor. The land route from Babylon lay across northern Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route had Crete for its first and most conspicuous station. Hence the gradual appearance of civilisation in Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the Greek islands is a normal and natural outcome of the geographical conditions.

But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains are fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less part in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we have discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites, on the other hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region was Cappadocia, where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions are almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia Minor. Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots of the fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably a small and unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until a few centuries before the Christian Era. They then assimilated the culture of the more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their territory. The Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of dying Babylon.

The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of these older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete, but it spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its script are so distinctive that we must recognise it as a native development, not a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian commerce was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C. the whole of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan monarchy, and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable artistic development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second millennium B.C.

But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks or Hellenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the third branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these that swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to the west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric population with the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the nations of modern Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth must be a short account of its civilisation.

The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater height than the older nations had ever done, was the Hellenes. There is no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the Hellenes, or even to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of the peninsula which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain why European civilisation began in Greece. The Hellenes had penetrated the region in which there was constant contact with all the varied cultures of the older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture, they could not live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence. Then the traders of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean rivals, brought the great pacific cultural influence of commerce to bear on them. After some hundreds of years of internal trouble, barbaric quarrels, and fresh arrivals from the north, Greece began to wear an aspect of civilisation. Many of the Greeks passed to Asia Minor, as they increased, and, freed from the despotism of tradition, in living contact with the luxury and culture of Persia, which had advanced as far as Europe, they evolved the fine civilisation of the Greek colonies, and reacted on the motherland. Finally, there came the heroic struggle against the Persian invaders, and from the ashes of their early civilisation arose the marble city which will never die in the memory of Europe.

The Romans had meantime been advancing. We may neglect the older Italian culture, as it had far less to do with the making of Italy and Europe than the influence of the east. By about 500 B.C. Rome was a small kingdom with a primitive civilisation, busy in subduing the neighbouring tribes who threatened its security, and unconsciously gathering the seeds of culture which some of them contained. By about 300 B.C. the vigour of the Romans had united all the tribes of Italy in a powerful republic, and wealth began to accumulate at Rome. Not far to the east was the glittering civilisation of Greece; to the south was Carthage, a busy centre of commerce, navigation, and art; and from the Mediterranean came processions of ships bringing stimulating fragments and stories of the hoary culture of the east. Within another two hundred years Rome annihilated Carthage, paralysed and overran Greece, and sent its legions over the Asiatic provinces of the older empires. By the beginning of the Christian Era all that remained of the culture of the old world was gathered in Rome. All the philosophies of Greece, all the religions of Persia and Judea and Egypt, all the luxuries and vices of the east, found a home in it. Every stream of culture that had started from the later and higher Neolithic age had ended in Rome.

And in the meantime Rome had begun to disseminate its heritage over Europe. Its legions poured over Spain and Gaul and Germany and Britain. Its administrators and judges and teachers followed the eagles, and set up schools and law-courts and theatres and baths and temples. It flung broad roads to the north of Britain and the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Under the shelter of the "Roman Peace" the peoples of Europe could spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands.

Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation. Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed. The physical deterioration of the citizens of Rome was a small matter in its fall. Fiscal and imperial blunders loosed the frame of its empire. The resources were still there, but there was none to organise and unify them. The imperial system—or chaos—ruined Rome. And just when the demoralisation was greatest, and the Teutonic tribes at the frontiers were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system. A fierce and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe, threw themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes upon the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but there was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation underfoot, and Europe passed into the Dark Ages.

One more application of the evolutionary principle, and we close the story. The "barbarians"—the Goths and Vandals and their Germanic cousins—were barbaric only in comparison with the art and letters of Rome. They had law, polity, and ideals. European civilisation owes elements to them, as well as to Rome. To say simply that the barbarians destroyed the institutions of Rome is no adequate explanation of the Dark Ages. Let us see rather how the Dark Ages were enlightened.