igh authorities, such as Mr. Flinders Petrie, believe that the
evidence suggests that the founders of this dynastic civilisation came
from "the mountainous region between Egypt and the Red Sea." 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.

These early civilisations are merely the highest point of Neolithic
culture. The Egyptian remains show a very gradual development of
pottery, ornamentation, etc., into which copper articles are introduced
in time. The dawn of civilisation is as gradual as the dawn of the
day. The whole gamut of culture--Eolithic, Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and
civilised--is struck in the successive layers of Egyptian remains.
But to give even a summary of its historical development is neither
necessary nor possible here. The maintenance of its progress is as
intelligible as its initial advance. Unlike China, it lay in the main
region of human development, and we find that even before 6000 B.C. it
developed a system of shipping and commerce which kept it in touch with
other peoples over the entire region, and helped to promote development
both in them and itself.

Equally intelligible is the development of civilisation in Mesopotamia.
The long and fertile valley which lies between the mountainous region
and