The evolution of mind / by Joseph McCabe.

  • Joseph McCabe
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The evolution of mind / by Joseph McCabe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    or intermittent, we may turn to survey the main stream of human development. (Tracked to its ultimate sources, the civilisation of Europe begins with an advancing Neolithic culture in Egypt 10,000 years ago, and on the heights overlooking the valley of Mesopotamia some 8000 years ago. The origin of the earliest Egyptians is obscure. Most writers regard the valley of the Nile as a battle-ground of conflicting tribes between 8000 and 6000 B.c., and believe that the founders of the dynastic civilisation about 6000 B.c. came from the east, or south-east. What indications there are point to a great ferment of tribes, partly Turkic and partly Semitic, in the region of Syria and Arabia, from which tribes suc- cessively emerge to found the civilisations of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Phoenicians, Persians, and Jews. It is not my purpose to trace, even in broad lines, the development of these civilisations. In the case of Egypt the evolution has been amply recovered. From the primitive culture of the Stone Age, the Egyptians gradually rise to a higher art, the use of metal, an elaborate system of religion, a lofty code of morals, and a vast policy of imperial and com- mercial expansion. In the course of time their enlarging sphere touches the fringe of another developing civilisation. The Mongolic Sumerians, of whom we first catch sight on the hills above the Babylonian plain about 6000 B.c., move into the valley, are joined and superseded by the Semites, and the empire of Babylon begins to expand from
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