ANCIENT EGYPT, ASIA MINOR, AND CRETE 
PREHISTORIC EGYPT 
Many students believe that civilization began in Egypt. 
Recent discoveries, however, appear to indicate that south- 
western Asia had on the whole the priority, although in 
certain respects the predynastic Egyptians were prob- 
ably further advanced than any other people of their day. 
The truth is that human progress is a thing of such com- 
plexity that it advances very unevenly at various periods 
and in different localities. Furthermore, scarcely any- 
thing is so rare as a truly original idea or invention. 
People progress by borrowing, and isolated regions are 
practically certain to be backward. Egypt, while greatly 
favored by nature in many respects, was undeniably some- 
what isolated. For she had come, in the course of ages, 
to be hemmed in by deserts on both the east and the west; 
moreover, she lay a little to one side of the great cultural 
areas of the late prehistoric period, so far as we know them. 
The current impression of the precocity of early Egyptian 
civilization rests perhaps on the fact that we know far 
more about it than we do about the civilization of other 
countries because the wonderfully dry climate of Egypt 
has preserved early remains of all sorts far better than 
they have been preserved elsewhere. Also the Egyptians 
resorted largely to stone for building, for inscriptions, and 
for pictures of everyday life; and stone, of course, lasts 
almost indefinitely. 
The Nile, rising in equatorial Africa, flows in a general 
northerly direction through a narrow valley varying from’ 
ten to thirty miles in width, until at last it enters the 
Mediterranean Sea at the Delta. This, far back in the 
prehistoric period, formed a bay, a deep notch in the 
otherwise regular and almost featureless coast line. Long 
before the dawn of history, however, mud brought down 
by the Nile from the heart of Africa had filled it up. The 
great river at one time reached the sea through seven 
mouths; but these have gradually decreased in number as 
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