EARLY CIVILIZATIONS 137 
for the avoidance of enemies. Hence the earliest 
civilizations tended to arise in areas which were 
protected by natural ramparts from the irruption of 
rival tribes. Egypt had the desert on three sides, and 
the sea—an impassable barrier to early peoples—on 
the fourth. The valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris 
presented similar features. In both areas rich alluvial 
soil offered a full reward to attempts at agriculture, 
and the alternation of summer and winter encouraged 
the making of provision for the non-productive period 
by the taking advantage of the period of growth: 
conditions not present under the “endless summer 
skies” of Tropical lands, where an easy and perennial 
food-supply tended against the development of 
industry. 
The basin of the Mediterranean—the cradle of the 
earlier Western civilizations from the time of Egypt 
down to Rome—was, then, also the cradle of Euro- 
pean agriculture. These lands, with their wet winters 
and dry summers, the latter inimical to the develop- 
ment of tree growth, lent themselves to cultivation 
more readily than the great forest-belt which lay to 
the northward, sweeping across Europe from Britain 
to the Urals. Although there is clear evidence that 
grain was cultivated in Europe as far back as the 
Neolithic Period (say 7,000 to 5,000 B.c.), it seems 
established that when Roman agriculture stood at its 
perfection the peoples to the north were still mainly 
nomads, dependent for their food-supply on their 
flocks or on the chase. In Britain, Cesar found corn 
grown in Southern England, but the centre and north 
were largely forest land tenanted by tribes living on 
flesh and milk, and clothed in skins. The vigorous 
