Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-11-28
So WHEN MEN BEGAN TO DWELL IN,
CITIES

CITIES
TT Was out of the so-called helioIithic culture
we have described that the first beginnings
of anything that we can call civilization
arose.
1t is still doubtful whether we are to consider
Mesopotamia or Egypt the earlier scene of the
two parallel beginnings of settled communi-
ties living in towns. By 400 B. c., in both
these regions of earth, such communities ex-
listed and had been going on for a very con-
siderable time.
The excavations of the American expedition
at Nippur have unearthed evidence of a city
community existing there at least as early as
5000 B. c., and probably as early as 5000
B. c., an earlier date than anything we know
of in Egypt.
The late Mr. Aaron Aaronson found a real
wild wheat upon the slopes of Mount Hermon,
and it must be that somewhere in that part of
the world it's cultivation began 1t may be thai
from the western end of the Mediterranean,
possibly in some region now submerged, as a
center that the cultivation of wheat spread
over the entire eastern hemisphere
CIVILIZATION DEFINED.
But cultivation is not civilization the grow
ing of wheat had spread from the Atlantic to
the Pacific coast with the distribution of the
NeOlithic culture by perhaps $4,000 or 10000
B. c. before the beginning Of civilization.
Civilization is something more than the oCca
sional seasonal growing of wheat. 1t is the
settlement of men upon an area continuously
cultivated and possessed. who live in buildings
continuously inhabited with common rule
and common city or citadel.
For a long time civilization may quite posi-
bly, have developed in Mesopotamia without
any relations with the parallel beginning in
| Egypt. The two settlements may have been
| quite Independent, arising separately out OF
| the widely diffused Heliolithic Neolithic cul
! ture. Or they may have had a common
| origin in the region of the Mediterranean, the
| Red Sea and southern Arabia.
The first condition necessary to a real set
Ting down of Neoithic men, as distinguished
| from a mere temporary settlement among
abundant food, of course a trustworthy
| all-the-year-round supply of water, fodder for
| the animals, food for themselves, and building
material for their homes. There had to be
| everything they could need at any season, and
no want that would tempt them to wander
| farther.
| This was a possible state of affairs. nc
| doubt in many European and Asiatic valleys;
| and in many such valleys, as in the case of
| the Swiss lake dwellings, men settled from
a very early date indeed; but nowhere of any
countries now known to us, were these favor
able conditions found upon such a scale, and
nowhere did they hold good SO surely year in
| and year out as in Egypt and in the country
between the upper waters Of the Euphrates
and Tigris and the Persian Gulf.
A LAND OF PLENTY
Here was a constant water supply under en-
during sunlight; trustworthy harVests year by
year; in Mesopotamia wheat yielded, says
Herodotus, two hundredfold to the sower;
Pliny says that it was cut twice and after
wards yielded good fodder for sheep; there
were aboundant palms and many sorts OF
fruits; and as for building material, in Egypt
there was clay and easily worked stone and
in Mesopotamia, a clay that becomes brick
in the sunshine.
In such countries men would cease to wan
der and settle down almost unaWares; they
would multiply and discover themselves num-
erous and by their numbers safe from any
casual assalant. They multiplied, producing
a denser human population than the earth
had ever known before; their houses became
more substantial, wild beasts were eXtermi-
mated over great areas the security OF life in
creased so that ordinary men went ABOUT in
the towns and fields without encumberng
themselves with weapons, and among them
selves, at least, they became peaceful peoples
Men took root as man had never taken root
before
| But in the less fertile and more seasonal
lands outside these favored areas, in the for