The Early Civilizations
We have said enough about patriarchs and kings for the time being. Let us now go back a little and consider the early civilizations and the kind of people who lived in those days.
We do not know very much about these early peoples, but we know much more about them than about the Palaeolithic and Neolithic man.
We have got even now huge buildings in ruins which were built thousands of years ago. And looking at these buildings and temples and palaces, we can form some idea of what the early people were like and what they did. Specially helpful to us are the sculptures and carvings in these old buildings. From these sculptures we can find out sometimes what kind of dress they used to wear and many other things.
We cannot say definitely where men first settled down and developed a civilization. Some people say that there was a great country, which they now call Atlantis, in the Atlantic Ocean. In this country, it is said, people lived and were highly civilized, but the whole country somehow or other was swallowed up by the Atlantic Ocean and no part of it remains. We have no proof of this, only stories. So we can leave this out and need not consider it.
Then again we are told by some people that there were great civilizations in olden times in America. You know that Columbus is supposed to have discovered America. But this does not mean that America was not there before Columbus came. It simply means that the people of Europe did not know of it till Columbus found it out for them. Long before Columbus went there, people lived there and had some kind of civilization. We find ruins of very old buildings in Yukatan, which is in Mexico in North America, and in Peru in South America. We can certainly say therefore that in Peru and Yukatan civilized people lived in very early times. But we cannot say much more about them, as we do not know much at present. Perhaps we may find out many more facts about them later.
In Eurasia, as Europe and Asia together are called, the earliest civilizations were probably in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, India and China. Egypt is now considered to be in Africa, but we may consider it with Eurasia as it is very near.
When the old tribes which used to wander about wanted to settle down, what kind of place would they choose? It must be a place where they could get their food easily; and their food was partly grown in the fields by agriculture. For agriculture, water is very necessary. Without water, the fields dry up and nothing can be grown in them. You know that when there is not enough rain during the monsoon in India, little food is grown and there is a famine. The poor get nothing to eat and starve. So water is essential. The early settlers must therefore have chosen places to live in where there was plenty of water. We find that this was so. In Mesopotamia, they settled down between the two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
In Egypt, they had the great Nile. In India, most of their cities were near the big rivers-the Indus, the Ganges, the Jumna. Water was so necessary for them that they looked upon those rivers which gave them food and abundance, as sacred and holy. In Egypt, they called the Nile 'Father Nile', and worshipped it. In India, you know that the Ganges was worshipped and is still considered holy. It is called 'Mother Ganges' (Ganga mai) and you hear pilgrims shout out 'Ganga mai ki-jai'. It is quite easy to understand this worship as these rivers meant so much to them. They gave them not only water but fine mud and sand which made the fields rich and fertile. Because of the river water and mud, the land gave plenty of food. So the rivers might well be called 'father' and 'mother'. But people have a habit of forgetting why they do things. Unthinkingly, they go on copying others. We must remember that the Nile and the Ganges are considered holy because they gave water and food.
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