ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE EVANS. 437 



of the immediately superposed early Neolithic stratum of the shell 

 mounds, which, moreover, as has been, already said, evidence a change 

 both in climatic and geological conditions, implying a considerable 

 interval of time. 



It is a commonplace of archeology that the culture of the Neolithic 

 peoples throughout a large part of central, northern, and western 

 Europe — like the newly domesticated species possessed by them — is 

 Eurasiatic in type. So, too, in southern Greece and the ^Egean world 

 we meet with a form of Neolithic culture which must be essentially 

 regarded as a prolongation of that of Asia Minor. 



It is clear that it is on this Neolithic foundation that our later 

 civilization immediately stands. But in the constant chain of actions 

 and reactions by which the history of mankind is bound together — 

 short of the extinction of all concerned, an hypothesis in this case 

 excluded — it is equally certain that no great human achievement is 

 without its continuous effect. The more we realize the substantial 

 amount of progress of the men of the late Quaternary age in arts 

 and crafts and ideas, the more difficult it is to avoid the conclusion 

 that somewhere " at the back of behind" — it may be by more than 

 one route and on more than one continent, in Asia as well as Africa — 

 actual links of connection may eventually come to light. 



Of the origins of our complex European culture this much at least 

 can be confidently stated : The earliest extraneous sources on which 

 it drew lay respectively in two directions — in the Valley of the Nile, 

 on one side, and in that of the Euphrates, on the other. 



Of the high early culture in the lower Euphrates Valley our first 

 real Iniowledge has been due to the excavations of De Sarzec in the 

 mounds of Tello, the ancient Lagash. It is now seen that the civili- 

 zation that we call Babylonian, and which was hitherto known under 

 Its Semitic guise, was really in its main features an inheritance from 

 the earlier Sumerian race — culture in this case once more dominating 

 nationality. Even the laws which Hammurabi traditionally received 

 from the Babylonian sun god were largely modeled on the reforms 

 enacted a thousand years earlier by his predecessor. Urukagina, and 

 ascribed by him to the inspiration of the city god of Lagash.^ It is 

 hardly necessary to insist on the later indebtedness of our civiliza- 

 tion to this culture in its Semitized shape, as passed on, together with 

 other more purely Semitic elements, to the Mediterranean world 

 through Syria, Canaan, and Phoenicia, or by way of Assyria, and 

 by means of the increasing hold gained on the old Hittite region of 

 Anatolia. 



Even beyond the ancient Mesopotamian region which was the focus 

 of these influences, the researches of De Morgan. Gautier, and 

 Lampre, of the French " Delegation en Perse," have opened up 



* See L. W. King. " History of Sumner and Akkad," p. 184. 

 73839"— SM 1916 29 



