io8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



economic basis of life. In Mesopotamia and on the Indus there have been 

 more marked fluctuations ; cities grew up and then died down when a 

 stream left them to take a new course, and there was thus much wastage 

 of momentum, with, no doubt, compensations in the direction of freshness 

 of attack on environmental difficulties. The Nile slot contrasts so sharply 

 with the plateau desert on either side that the peasantry now, and probably 

 in the past, know little of the desert and fear it ; Egypt basically seems to 

 have been at first a self-contained unit receiving stimuli from withput ; 

 Mesopotamia with its fluctuations seems to have exercised more influence 

 over regions of Asia and Europe. How far the Indus civilisation aifected 

 the pre-Aryan life of central and southern India and thus the cultures 

 associated with the speakers of Dravidian languages, which are still so 

 important in southern India, is still a matter for pioneer research, though 

 Slater has to some extent made an attempt to work this out — an attempt 

 the more striking in that it was made before Sir John Marshall had dis- 

 covered the Indus civilisation. 



It is important to note here the immensity of the change that modern 

 ideas have effected in Egypt. Perennial irrigation has made it possible 

 to grow different crops in the different seasons, and the population has 

 increased phenomenally. But the new schemes draw more from the soil 

 and give it less silt, so Egypt is needing to import manures, and her agri- 

 cultural life is drawn into commercial relations in revolutionary fashion. 



IV. Cultivators and Herdsmen. 

 It is probable that the earliest cultivators were still without domestic 

 animals, and the old view, still so often quoted, that hunting developed 

 via pastoralism into agriculture, is now to be considered very doubtful. 

 But domestication of animals was an achievement of very early times too, 

 and, in such regions as the Fertile Crescent with its grass zones, it un- 

 doubtedly assumed great importance and led to the beginning of age- 

 long conflicts and interactions between herdsmen and cultivators. The 

 herdsmen, basically a close corporation gathering around the flocks and 

 needing men to add to their strength for defence, as well as discipline and 

 organisation to maintain unity, have often dominated peasant neigh- 

 bours, but this special ability appears to have been much developed when 

 the horse was acquired as a companion and helper — and that belongs to a 

 later stage of this argument. The close nomad corporation, with little 

 opportunity of expressing itself in luxury and building, has as features 

 family pride and the idealisation of the hero ancestor. A measure of endo- 

 gamy is a natural expression of this mentality, whereas some amount of 

 exogamy is often encouraged by cultivators, probably as a means to peace. 



V. Social Features accompanying Cultivation. 

 The bearings of the introduction of cultivation on social life and organisa- 

 tion have obviously been of the first importance. There was involved 

 the idea of sowing for a crop to be reaped weeks or even months ahead — 

 that is, there was now an incitement to prevision and provision. There 

 was an observable sequence that made argument more solid than it was 



