THE CIVILIZATIONS OF MAN 97 



At the moment of his first conscious view of nature, man 

 did not understand. All about him, it seemed, was mystery 

 and hostility. The dominant leaders to whom he turned, 

 knowing no more than he, gave him answers and a way of 

 life through "revelation." In man's search for understand- 

 ing he must realize that nothing is "revealed"; all that comes 

 to him in the way of truth must be sought out and tested 

 and retested. 



As Neolithic times merge into the Bronze Age the ar- 

 chaeological record improves, and much more definite in- 

 formation becomes available. Man buried his dead with 

 ceremony and with artifacts to accompany him in a future 

 life— a widespread concept by now which always promised 

 a better life in the hereafter, however the expectations may 

 have varied among the tribes. 



A real division of labor was bemnnincr as the Bronze 

 Age neared. The dawn of agriculture and the replacement 

 of the rough stone implements of the Paleolithic by the 

 polished and more thoroughly fashioned tools of the Neo- 

 lithic had no doubt started the division into various occu- 

 pations. Anthropologists say that some persons must have 

 been at least partially dedicated to the tilling of the soil, even 

 though Neolithic man still hunted and took his crops in 

 between the migrations of the hunt. Some must have been 

 more talented and better suited to the making of the really 

 fine, polished stone implements of these peoples; and, of 

 course, there were the priests and the chieftains, and pos- 

 sibly their retainers. As the Bronze Age opened and copper 

 came into use, the division of labor became more pro- 

 nounced. All the processes involved in the making of metal 

 tools could not be controlled by one man, or even by one 

 family. Trade for copper and eventually the building of 

 larger vessels than canoes to transport it led quickly to a 

 considerable division of the population, and real cooperation 

 through specialized effort flourished. The earliest civiliza- 

 tions in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and along the Nile 



