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The Origin of Ancient Civilizations and Toynbee's Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Robert Heine-Geldern
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Some of us may still remember the time when the ancient civilizations— the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, and Chinese—were considered as isolated phenomena and as products of completely independent developments. It was only for later periods that influences from outside were conceded to a certain, rather limited, extent, such as those of the Near East in Greece, of Hellenism in India, or of the nomad peoples in China. In general, specialists looked but rarely beyond the invisible walls with which they had surrounded their domains. There were even those who resented any allusion to the possibility that foreign influence might have contributed to the formation of their favorite civilization. A few bold scholars had already attempted to trace cultural diffusion across wider expanses, to prove, for instance, that Chinese civilization was derived directly from that of Babylonia. But these premature and rather naïve attempts, based on entirely insufficient data, were only apt to discourage any too daring comparison.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 4 , Issue 13 , January 1956 , pp. 81 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study ofHistory, Vol. I, pp. 131, 184, 188.

2. C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (London, Methuen, 1940), pp. 82-84, 125-148; Kurt Tackenberg, "Die jiingere Steinzeit Europas," Historia Mundi, Vol. 2 (Bern, 1953), pp. 34-35.

3. Fritz Schachermeyr, "Die vorderasiatische Kulturdrift," "Saeculum," Vol. 5 (1954), pp. 268-291.

4. R. Heine-Geldern, "Urheimat und früheste Wanderungen der Austronesier," Anthro pos, Vol. 27 (1932), pp. 543-619.

5. I have provisionally adopted the term "protoliterary civilization," used by American archaeologists, even though I am not yet quite convinced that it will maintain itself permanent ly. It comprises the second part of the Uruk period and the period of Jemdet Nasr.

6. Cf., for instance, the first chapter in Alexander Rüstow's Ortsbestimmung der Gegen wart, Vol. I (Zürich, 1950).

7. Franz Hančar, "Stand und historische Bedeutung der Pferdezucht Mittelasiens im I. Jahrtausend v. Chr.," Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, Vol. 9 (1952), pp. 480-482; Karl Jettmar, "Seit wann gibt es Reiternomaden in Zentralasien?" Die Umschau, Vol. 53 (1953), pp. 590-592; "Les plus anciennes civilisations d'éleveurs des steppes d'Asie Cen trale," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, Vol. I (1953-54), pp. 760-783.

8. Peter Bensch, "Die Entstehung der primären Hochkulturen als ethnologisches Prob lem," Zeitschriftfür Ethnologie, Vol. 77 (1952), pp. 165-187.

9. Ann Louise Perkins, The Comparative Stratigraphy of Early Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1949), p. 15.

10. Henri Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1951), pp. 42-43; Helene J. Kantor, "Further Evidence for Early Mesopo tamian Relations with Egypt," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. II (1952), pp. 249-250. V. Gordon Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 43, 53-54, 72, 74, 75.

11. I had already written these pages when an article by E. A. Speiser came into my hands in which this eminent orientalist expresses the same ideas. Cf. E. A. Speiser, "The Beginnings of Civilization in Mesopotamia," Supplement to the Journal of the American Oriental Society, No. 4 (1939), pp. 17-25, 28-29.

12. One thinks, for instance, that the necessity to create and maintain a system of canals in order to irrigate the arid plains of Babylonia resulted in the development of states with powerful central governments. Cf. "Irrigation Civilizations, a Comparative Study," Social Science Monographs, No. I (Washington, 1955). It is quite probable that the necessity to pro vide for irrigation may have contributed to the formation of Babylonian civilization, but one must not exaggerate its importance.

13. Henri Frankfort, Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem (Chicago, University of Chi cago Press, 1932), pp. 30-31, 33-34, 39-40; C. Leonard Woolley, The Development of Sumerian Art (New York, Scribner's, 1935), pp. 49-53; Speiser,op. cit., pp. 21, 28-31; Seton Lloyd, Twin Rivers, 2d ed. (London, Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 6-7; Perkins, op. cit., p. 98; "The Relative Chronology of Mesopotamia," Relative Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, Robert W. Ehrich, ed. (Chicago, 1954), pp. 46-47; Childe, op. cit., pp. 123-124.

14. Speiser, op. cit., p. 22; Alexander Scharff, "Die Frühkulturen Aegyptens und Mesopo tamiens," Der Alte Orient, Vol. 41 (Leipzig, 1941); "Archäologische Beiträge zur Frage der Entstehung der Hieroglyphenschrift," Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissen schaften, 1942, No. 3; Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization, pp. 82-83, 100-111; Kantor, op. cit.; Childe, op. cit., pp. 130-131, 238-244.

15. Sir Mortimer Wheeler, "Iran and India in Pre-1slamic Times," Ancient India, Vol. 4 (1947-48), pp. 91-92; "Archaeology and the Transmission of Ideas," Antiquity, Vol. 26 (1952), pp. 185-187.

16. R. Heine-Geldern, "China, die Ostkaspische Kultur und die Herkunft der Schrift," Paideuma, Vol. 4 (1950), pp. 76-77, 80.

17. Max Loehr, "Zur Ur- und Vorgeschichte Chinas," Saeculum, Vol. 3 (1952), pp. 31-46.

18. R. Heine-Geldern, "China, die Ostkaspische Kultur und die Herkunft der Schrift," Paideuma, Vol. 4 (1950), pp. 51-92. See pp. 78-83 for my conjecture that writing probably was introduced into China during the Lung-shan period. Although it was not published until 1950, my article was written in 1948. I did not know at that time that two sherds of Lung-shan ware had been found which actually bear inscriptions in two up till then unknown and of course undeciphered scripts. They have been reproduced by Sidney M. Kaplan in his paper, "Early Pottery from the Liang Chu Site, Chekiang Province," Archives of the Chinese Art Society, Vol. 3 (1948-49).

19. It should be noted that the Maya culture can no longer be considered as the most ancient civilization of Meso-Amcrica.

20. Margaret T. Hodgen, "Change and History," Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, Vol. 18 (New York, 1952).

21. Of course very simple inventions may have been made repeatedly. In general it is very difficult to prove it.

22. For a brief discussion of this subject, see Heine-Geldern, "Das Problem vorkolum bischer Beziehungen zwischen Alter und Neuer Welt und seine Bedeutung für die allgemeine Kulturgeschichte," Anzeiger der phil.-hist. Klasse der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissen schaften, Vol. 91 (1954), pp. 346-348, 355-356.

23. See Wendel C. Bennett's remarks in Selected Papers ofthe XXIXth International Congress of Americanists, Vol. I (Chicago, 1951), and in Anthropology Today, A. L. Kroeber, ed. (Chi cago, University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 212.

24. R. Heine-Geldern, "Die asiatische Herkunft der südamerikanischen Metalltechnik," Paideuma, Vol. 5 (1954), pp. 347-423.

25. Cf. for instance Miguel Covarrubias, Mexico South (New York, Knopf, 1947), p. 110.

26. The relations between ancient China and Meso-America will be dealt with in an article which is to be published in Saeculum.

27. R. Heine-Geldern and Gordon F. Ekholm, "Significant Parallels in the Symbolic Arts of Southern Asia and Middle America," Selected Papers of the XXIXth International Congress of Americanists, Vol. I, The Civilizations of Ancient America (Chicago, 1951), pp. 299-309; Gordon F. Ekholm, "A Possible Focus of Asiatic Influence in the Late Classic Cultures of Mesoamerica," Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 9 (1953), pp. 72-89. A French scholar, Jean Naudou, arrived at practically the same conclusions as Ekholm and I. Mr. Naudou was kind enough to allow me to read his manuscript, but I do not know if it was ever published. For an excellent general discussion of the problem of Asiatic-American cultural relations and of the problems involved, cf. Gordon F. Ekholm, "The New Orienta tion toward Problems of Asiatic-American Relationships," New Interpretations of Aboriginal American Culture History, 75th Anniversary Volume of the Anthropologica Society of Washington (Washington, D.C., 1955), pp. 95-109.

28. Wolfram Eberhard, Kultur und Siedlung der Randvölker Chinas (Leiden, 1942), pp. 332-335,338,345.

29. The Travels of Fa-hsien (399-414 A.D.), or Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms, re-trans lated by H. A. Giles (Cambridge, 1923), pp. 76-79; Paul Pelliot, "Quelques textes chinois concernant l'Indochine hindouisée," Études Asiatiques, Vol. 2 (Paris, 1925), pp. 255-260.

30. Charles Wolcott Brooks, "Reports of Japanese Vessels Wrecked in the North Pacific, from the Earliest Records to the Present Time," Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Vol. 6 (1875), pp. 50-66.

31. It is hardly necessary to say that even the most severe critics of Toynbee will still find in his work a prodigious number of precious and stimulating ideas.

32. Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 192-195; Vol. 2, pp. 12-15, 26-29, 300-301; Vol. 3, pp. 1-22.

33. I hope no one will think that I intend to replace the pan-Egyptian theories of Sir G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry by a pan-Babylonian theory. I have no such intention. Things are not as simple as that. Indeed, they are far more complicated than I was able to show in this brief article. The fact that a man is the descendant of a certain very distant ancestor does not mean that all his genes, all his bodily and mental characteristics, were inherited from that source.

34. Toynbee, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 187.