HISTORICAL CYCLES — CRAWFORD 451 



earliest found in Sunier and Assyria.^ Clearly therefore at some 

 date round about 5000 B. C. the solitary free-roving human cell was 

 integrated into the multicellular organism of a community.** The 

 same change occurred elsewhere, probably about the same time. The 

 predynastic Egyptians succeeded the neolithic desert rovers of the 

 Sahara, and may well have been directly descended from them. The 

 neolithic Cretans became the citizens of Cnossos. 



Together with this integration, and as a necessary accompaniment 

 of it, there developed specialization of function. The hunter is a 

 law unto himself, self-determined and independent, just like the free- 

 swimming cell. The citizen of a civilized community has already 

 sacrificed niuch of his independence in exchange for more leisure and 

 an easier mode of existence. Division of labor has arrived, and with 

 it all the implications of the social contract. 



The course of biological evolution is very similar. From the single 

 cell there developed, some eleven hundred million years ago, 



organisms composed of many cells living together in a communal life like that 

 of a small village or a great city. The cells are now specialized into groups, and 

 each kind of cell follows a trade or profession, exerting for the community its 

 special skill, receiving from the community in exchange food, warmth, and pro- 

 tection. To carry out the scheme and to insure that each cell receives its due 

 share of food, and of such cell products as it no longer makes for itself, elaborate 

 systems of conduits — the circulatory, lymphatic, and glandular systems — have 

 been evolved ; and equally elaborate machinery, comparable with the telegraphs, 

 telephones, and newspaper and business ofBces of the city, brings information of 

 the outer world, and controls the activities of the cell community.' 



Civilization advances by the integration of its cells into ever larger 

 and larger organizations — from the family to the tribe, city, and na- 

 tion, and from nation to empire, confederacy, and league. The proc- 

 ess, as we have seen, is not continuous but spasmodic. The integrated 

 multicellular community is an organism with a life cycle of its own. 

 The cycle ends with the break-up or death of the organism. The 

 tribe is dispersed; the city is destroyed; the nation decays, shrivels 

 up, and disappears. But a new one generally ® rises from the ashes 

 of the old. The constituent cells, the individual human beings, live 



s In caves near Sulaimanya in southern Kurdistan, Miss Garrod found Mousterian (old 

 paleolithic) iiint implements in the lower layers, overlaid by a later paleolithic layer and 

 finally by a top neolithic layer containing painted pottery of the antediluvian Sumerian 

 type. See Bull. Amer. School Prehist. Research (G. G. MacCurdy, director), No. 6, pp. 

 8-43, March, 1930. 



' We may, of course, regard whatever lay between the solitary hunter and the village 

 or city state as transitional and as corresponding perhaps to the early cell aggregations 

 of biology— such as flagellate colonies, sponges, and polyps. 



' Handley in British Medical Journal (op. cit. supra). 



' But not always ; some of the American civilizations for instance have vanished utterly 

 and have not been replaced by any other. 



149571—33 30 



