Spontaneous Civilisation in Europe
Under certain conditions, known to have arisen independently in many different regions of the earth, articles of luxury and art, irrefragable witnesses to incipient civilisation, begin to be produced spontaneously. To what remote periods have not cave deposits thrown back the history of artistic effort in the valleys of Gaul? And what credit, in reason, can be given to Greece, or even to Rome, for the elaborate social order of the Teutonic tribes, which was of ancient standing when first the Romans penetrated beyond the Danube and Rhine? So well rooted in the soil, so potent and so widely diffused were the Teutonic and Celtic social systems, that in the history of our actual civilisation they are factors as worthy of consideration as the influences of Rome, Greece, or Palestine. If Græco-Roman Christianity came greatly to modify them in the end, they had, perhaps, ere that, modified Christianity itself hardly less; and the social superiority of the northern and western adherents of the now dominant religion is probably as much due to character and habits developed before ever its creed was formulated, as the dominance of the Turkish peoples in the Islamic system is undoubtedly due to social characteristics evolved in the oases and steppe-lands of Central Asia far back in the “Times of Ignorance.”
Let it, therefore, be understood that in the following pages it is not necessarily the whole origin of European civilisation that is being set forth, but the modification and heightening of probably pre-existent European culture by the first influences of the Nearer East which can be supposed to have reached it. Of these influences the effect is to some extent a matter of inference only. We cannot always, or, indeed, often, point with any assurance to actual results of their action. In great part we must still be content with little more than a demonstration that directly along certain lines of communication, or indirectly through certain intermediaries, the civilisations of the South could, or did, come into relation with European areas at an early age.
The Two Great Sea Routes
The sea routes which were most likely to be used in ruder ages by Levantine mariners, after leaving the Nile estuaries or the Syrian ports—which, as a matter of fact, are known to have been most used—are: that which followed the littoral of Asia Minor to Rhodes, whence it bifurcated, to Crete on the one hand, and to the Ægean isles and coasts on the other; or that striking across the narrow strait to Cyprus, and thence by way of Rhodes, or directly, to Crete. In connection with both these routes, the importance of Crete and Rhodes, and especially the former, must be obvious. Thence the Cyrenean and Carthaginian projections of Africa were reached with greater ease than by way of the littoral to west of Egypt, which, for some hundreds of miles, is desert, reef-girt, almost harbourless, and pitilessly vexed by an on-shore wind. From Carthage, Sicily and the Italian peninsula were readily accessible, or the Gibraltar strait and the Iberian shores could be made after coasting a littoral much kinder to navigation than that between Egypt and the western bight of the Syrtis.
THE GREAT SEA ROUTES OF ANCIENT CIVILISATION
Along the routes marked in this map lay the course of Ægean and Phœnician civilisation. The importance of Crete and Rhodes in the spreading of civilisation is clearly seen; they may be called the “half-way houses” between Mesopotamian culture, with its seat in the valley of the Euphrates, and Egyptian culture, in the valley of the Nile.
The Two Great Land Routes
The land routes in chief were also two. The Nile valley, closed by desert on the western side, had comparatively easy access to the great natural road which, leading northwards through Syria, passes at first along the Palestinian littoral, and then through the central cleft between the Lebanons to the Orontes valley. Mesopotamian traders, following up the Euphrates till they had left the desert part of its course behind them, fell into this same road in the region of Aleppo and Antioch. Thence by the easy passes which turn the southern end of Mount Amanus, the combined caravans reached Tarsus, penetrated Taurus by the gap of the Cilician Gates, and found themselves on the plateau of Asia Minor with a choice of easy routes leading either to the rich western littoral, or the north-western straits, and from any and every point offering safe passage to South-eastern Europe. This was the only land route for Egyptian civilisation. But the Mesopotamian had an alternative one, leading by way of the upper Tigris valley to the north of Taurus and the Cappadocian plateau, whence it descended the Sangarius and debouched, like the first route, on either the north-western or the western coast of Anatolia.