Egyptian civilization can be summed up in three sentences. It covered the greatest time span of any civilization known to history. Its monuments are the most massive. Its records, chiefly in stone, picture massed humans directed for at least thirty centuries toward providing a satisfying and rewarding after-life for a tiny favored minority of its population. To achieve this result, the natural resources of three adjacent continents were combined and concentrated into the Nile Valley through an effective imperial apparatus that enabled the Egyptians to exploit the resources and peoples of adjacent Africa, Asia and Europe for the enrichment and empowerment of the rulers of Egypt and its dependencies. The disintegration and collapse of Egyptian civilization occupied only a small fraction of the time devoted to its upbuilding and supremacy.
Before, during and after Egyptians played their long and distinguished parts in the recorded history of civilization, the continent of Asia was producing a series of civilization in four areas: first at the crossroads joining Africa and Europe to Asia; then in Western Asia (Asia Minor); in Central Asia, especially in India and Indonesia and finally in China and the Far East.
Experiments with civilization during the past six thousand years have centered in the Eurasian land mass, including the North African littoral of the Mediterranean Sea. Within this area of potential or actual civilization, until very recent times, the centers of civilization have been widely separated geographically and temporally. Occasionally they have been unified and integrated by some unusual up-thrust like that of the Egyptian, the Chinese or the Roman civilizations. In the intervals between these up-thrusts various centers of civilization have maintained a large degree of autonomy and isolation. Only in the past five centuries have communication, transportation, trade and tourism created the basis for an experiment in organizing and coordination of a planet-wide experiment in civilization.
Nature offered humankind two logical areas for the establishment of civilizations. One was the cross-roads of migration, trade and travel by land to and from Asia, Africa and Europe. The other was the Mediterranean with its possibility of relatively safe and easy water-migration, trade and travel between the three continents making up its littoral. Both possibilities were brought together in the Eastern Mediterranean with its multitude of islands, its broken coastline, and its many safe harbors.
The Phoenicians developed their far-flung trading activities around the Mediterranean as a waterway, and the tri-continental crossroads as a logical center for a civilization built around business enterprise.
Aegean civilization occupied the eastern Mediterranean for approximately two thousand years. Its nucleus was the island of Crete. Its influence extended far beyond its island base into southern Europe, western Asia and North Africa. Experiments with civilization on and near the Indian sub-continent centered around the Indonesian archipelago and the rich, semi-tropical and tropical valleys of the Ganges, the Indus, the Gadari, the Irra-waddy and the Mekong. Although they were contiguous geographically and extended over a time span of approximately two thousand years they were aggregates rather than monolithic civilizations, retaining their localisms and avoiding any strong central authority.
Beginnings of civilization have been made outside the Asian-European-African triangle centering around the Mediterranean Sea and the band of South Asia extending from Mesopotamia through India and Indonesia to China. They include the high Andes, Mexico and Central America and parts of black Africa. In no one of these cases did the beginnings reach the stability and universality that characterized the Eurasian-African civilizations.
CHAPTER TWO
ROME'S OUTSTANDING EXPERIMENT
Among the many attempts to make the institutions and practices of civilization promote human welfare, Roman civilization deserves a very high rating. First, it was located in the eastern Mediterranean area, the home-site of so many civilizations. Second, it was part and parcel of a prolonged period of attempts by Egyptians, Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians, Mycaenians, Phoenicians and others in the area to set up successful empires and to play the lead role in building a civilization that would be more or less permanent. Third, the Romans seemed to have the hardiness, adaptability, persistence and capacity for self-discipline necessary to carry such a long term project to a successful conclusion. Among the widely varied human groups occupying the eastern Mediterranean area between 1000 B.C. and 1000 A.D., the Romans seem to have been well qualified to win the laurel crown.