There were not many climaxes in the first act, so far as we can see. But I think there may have been a few. Certainly the pace of the first act accelerated with the swing from simple gathering to more intensified collecting. The great cave art of France and Spain was probably an expression of a climax. Even the ideas of burying the dead and of the “Venus” figurines must also point to levels of human thought and activity that were over and above pure food-getting.
THE SECOND ACT
The second act began only about ten thousand years ago. A few of the players started it by themselves near the center of the Old World part of the stage, in the Near East. It began as a plant and animal act, but it soon became much more complicated.
But the players in this one part of the stage—in the Near East—were not the only ones to start off on the second act by themselves. Other players, possibly in several places in the Far East, and certainly in the New World, also started second acts that began as plant and animal acts, and then became complicated. We can call the whole second act The Food-Producers.
THE FIRST GREAT CLIMAX OF THE SECOND ACT
In the Near East, the first marked climax of the second act happened in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The play and the players reached that great climax that we call civilization. This seems to have come less than five thousand years after the second act began. But it could never have happened in the first act at all.
There is another curious thing about the first act. Many of the players didn’t know it was over and they kept on with their roles long after the second act had begun. On the edges of the stage there are today some players who are still going on with the first act. The Eskimos, and the native Australians, and certain tribes in the Amazon jungle are some of these players. They seem perfectly happy to keep on with the first act.
The second act moved from climax to climax. The civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt were only the earliest of these climaxes. The players to the west caught the spirit of the thing, and climaxes followed there. So also did climaxes come in the Far Eastern and New World portions of the stage.
The greater part of the second act should really be described to you by a historian. Although it was a very short act when compared to the first one, the climaxes complicate it a great deal. I, a prehistorian, have told you about only the first act, and the very beginning of the second.