388 | ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
the ancient irrigation works of Asia Minor and when Spain wrecked 
the efficient chinampa or lake-margin garden system of Mexico. But 
where man attempted to take without return, as nomadic grazier or 
burner of the forest, he created nothing for an invader to destroy 
and was himself obliged to keep moving or settle for a declining level 
of living. 
With the invention of written records in the more stable population 
centers the past can speak to us more explicitly, mind to mind. 
We can at last begin to see, not merely how cultures operate, but 
what gives them direction. Always there is the compelling frame- 
work of immediate environment—the sunny valley of the ordered 
Nile, the violence of the Tigris and Euphrates, the stormy northern 
seas, abode of vast schools of fish and pathway to rich plunder, the 
swampy ricelands of southern Asia, the lofty terraced potato fields 
of the Incas. Man can no more avoid coming to terms with such 
stern realities than he can dispense with his skin. 
But these physical or natural conditions are only part of the system. 
Interacting with them are the intangible values, ideals and beliefs of 
the resident culture. Here we find the cultural basis not only of 
character and personality, but even of technical advance. For as- 
suredly what is esteemed will be achieved, in some measure at least. 
If you would understand a people study their heroes, their art, and 
their faith. “Let me sing the songs of a people and I care not who 
makes their laws.” 
Now a lot of these matters are intuitive in origin. Yet I for one am 
inclined to set much store by the force of ideas more or less consciously 
evolved—a process greatly favored by the invention of written sym- 
bols. “Reading maketh a full man, conversation a ready man, and 
writing an exact man.” There is something quite sobering in the 
thought that men a century from now, perhaps 20 centuries from now, 
reading what you have written, will be at liberty to pronounce you 
what they will—a fool, a liar, a sage, or a man of taste. 
Thanks to the record, we know many of the ideas that, evolving, 
have shaped Western culture. Coming from the Greeks we have the 
right of the free mind to inquire. From the Jews we have a two-edged 
oift—the notion of consistent universal law along with the idea of man 
apart from nature. There was also more than a little suggestion that 
prosperity is among the rewards of virtue—a notion particularly 
congenial to our Puritan and (dare I say so) our Quaker ancestors. 
Christian thought laid the groundwork for universal brotherhood 
and freedom, but by emphasizing the transient character of this earth 
as a vale of tears did little to encourage our curiosity about it. Human 
dignity as first asserted applied to the immortal soul rather than to in- 
tellectual and political rights, although I suspect the first ultimately 
made the last two possible. To this we probably owe science and the 
