Development of Modern Civilization

81:3.1The cli­matic de­struc­tion of the rich, open grass­land hunt­ing and graz­ing grounds of Tur­kes­tan, be­gin­ning about 12,000 B.C., com­pelled the men of those re­gions to re­sort to new forms of in­dus­try and crude man­u­fac­tur­ing. Some turned to the cul­ti­va­tion of do­mes­ti­cated flocks, oth­ers be­came agri­cul­tur­ists or col­lec­tors of wa­ter-borne food, but the higher type of And­ite in­tel­lects chose to en­gage in trade and man­u­fac­ture. It even be­came the cus­tom for en­tire tribes to ded­i­cate them­selves to the de­vel­op­ment of a sin­gle in­dus­try. From the val­ley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yel­low River, the chief busi­ness of the su­pe­rior tribes be­came the cul­ti­va­tion of the soil, with com­merce as a side line.

81:3.2The in­crease in trade and in the man­u­fac­ture of raw ma­te­ri­als into var­i­ous ar­ti­cles of com­merce was di­rectly in­stru­men­tal in pro­duc­ing those early and semi­peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties which were so in­flu­en­tial in spread­ing the cul­ture and the arts of civ­i­liza­tion. Be­fore the era of ex­ten­sive world trade, so­cial com­mu­ni­ties were tribal—ex­panded fam­ily groups. Trade brought into fel­low­ship dif­fer­ent sorts of hu­man be­ings, thus con­tribut­ing to a more speedy cross-fer­til­iza­tion of cul­ture.

81:3.3About twelve thou­sand years ago the era of the in­de­pen­dent cities was dawn­ing. And these prim­i­tive trad­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing cities were al­ways sur­rounded by zones of agri­cul­ture and cat­tle rais­ing. While it is true that in­dus­try was pro­moted by the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dards of liv­ing, you should have no mis­con­cep­tion re­gard­ing the re­fine­ments of early ur­ban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the av­er­age prim­i­tive com­mu­nity rose from one to two feet ev­ery twenty-five years as the re­sult of the mere ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dirt and trash. Cer­tain of these olden cities also rose above the sur­round­ing ground very quickly be­cause their un­baked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the cus­tom to build new dwellings di­rectly on top of the ru­ins of the old.

81:3.4The wide­spread use of met­als was a fea­ture of this era of the early in­dus­trial and trad­ing cities. You have al­ready found a bronze cul­ture in Tur­kes­tan dat­ing be­fore 9000 B.C., and the And­ites early learned to work in iron, gold, and cop­per, as well. But con­di­tions were very dif­fer­ent away from the more ad­vanced cen­ters of civ­i­liza­tion. There were no dis­tinct pe­ri­ods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three ex­isted at the same time in dif­fer­ent lo­cal­i­ties.

81:3.5Gold was the first metal to be sought by man; it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an or­na­ment. Cop­per was next em­ployed but not ex­ten­sively un­til it was ad­mixed with tin to make the harder bronze. The dis­cov­ery of mix­ing cop­per and tin to make bronze was made by one of the Ad­am­son­ites of Tur­kes­tan whose high­land cop­per mine hap­pened to be lo­cated along­side a tin de­posit.

81:3.6With the ap­pear­ance of crude man­u­fac­ture and be­gin­ning in­dus­try, com­merce quickly be­came the most po­tent in­flu­ence in the spread of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion. The open­ing up of the trade chan­nels by land and by sea greatly fa­cil­i­tated travel and the mix­ing of cul­tures as well as the blend­ing of civ­i­liza­tions. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in gen­eral use through­out civ­i­lized and semi­civ­i­lized lands. These later races not only had the do­mes­ti­cated horse but also var­i­ous sorts of wag­ons and char­i­ots. Ages be­fore, the wheel had been used, but now ve­hi­cles so equipped be­came uni­ver­sally em­ployed both in com­merce and war.

81:3.7The trav­el­ing trader and the rov­ing ex­plorer did more to ad­vance his­toric civ­i­liza­tion than all other in­flu­ences com­bined. Mil­i­tary con­quests, col­o­niza­tion, and mis­sion­ary en­ter­prises fos­tered by the later re­li­gions were also fac­tors in the spread of cul­ture; but these were all sec­ondary to the trad­ing re­la­tions, which were ever ac­cel­er­ated by the rapidly de­vel­op­ing arts and sci­ences of in­dus­try.

81:3.8In­fu­sion of the Adamic stock into the hu­man races not only quick­ened the pace of civ­i­liza­tion, but it also greatly stim­u­lated their pro­cliv­i­ties to­ward ad­ven­ture and ex­plo­ration to the end that most of Eura­sia and north­ern Africa was pres­ently oc­cu­pied by the rapidly mul­ti­ply­ing mixed de­scen­dants of the And­ites.