" From the northern part of the
same region, we saw, the ancestors of the Chinese set out across
Asia.
We have here a very suggestive set of facts in connection with
early civilisation. The Syro-Arabian region seems to have been a
thickly populated centre of advancing tribes, which would be in
striking accord with the view of progress that I am following.
But we need not press the disputed and obscure theory of the
origin of the historic Egyptians. The remains are said to show
that the lower valley of the Nile, which must have been but
recently formed by the river's annual deposit of mud, was a
theatre of contending tribes from about 8000 to 6000 B.C. The
fertile lands that had thus been provided attracted tribes from
east, west, and south, and there is a great confusion of
primitive cultures on its soil.
It is not certain that the race which eventually conquered and
founded the historical dynasties came from the mountainous lands
to the east. It is enough for us to know that the whole region
fermented with jostling peoples. Why it did so the previous
chapters will explain. It is the temperate zone into which men
had been pressed by the northern ice-sheet, and from Egypt to the
Indian Ocean it remained a fertile breeding-ground of nations.
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