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260 The Origin of Civilisation

This is the scenario of the complete life cycle history, as outlined by the generał theory of culture dynamics. (/ery few ciwilisatians of antiquity managed to go morę than once around the loop of the cycle, although, as noted earlier, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians probably did. The cycle to which Rostom refers is the unstable sequence, stages [2] to [4] on the curve, when expansion and contraction occur. The static norm is the initial opening and finał closing stages of the complete culture curwe; [1] is the original steady state and [5] is the systems collapse. These two phases show relatiwe stability because there is minimum growth. Once the system begins to expand along any one of the subsystem routes, or along a prong of the tripartite basis, its instability rises. Ali the early ciwilisations, from the world of the Orient, the classical Graeco-Roman era, and the New World, were specific exatnples of a universal phenomenon. Essentially, each remained localised, autonomous expressions of cultural achiewement. Thus, each operated like one unigue system expanding wigorously under fawourable conditions by utilising its own mitiatiwes and energies to take advantage of the abundance in the iramediate enuironment, Within the generał theory we postulated that two key types of limiting constraint exist, internal and external, imposing pressure on an expanding culture. Now we can flesh out the theory with a generalised reference to these copious examples where history charts the course of past cultures that failed to adapt.

The internal constraints would involve dynastie struggles and ciwil war, peasants rewolts, rebellions and rewolutions, over-population and Halthusian limits for food and land resources, depopulation and abandoned regions, (both town and countryside), excessive taxation and compulsory military service, over-worked land and over-utilisation of indigenous natural resources, abuse of the land by pollution or deforestation, corrupt or inefficient central administration, poor harwests and escalating debt, changing trade patterns. The external constraints will be egually multifarious. They include nomadic mvasions, conguests by foreign states, introduction of new technology which incurs economic disadwantages through lack of the relewant natural resources, (iron ore, coal reserves, oil or gas resources, for example), competition in trade from other states. Natural disasters are further examples of external constraints, such as earthquakes, wolcanoes, floods and inundations, plagues, and epidemics, and salination of the land. Any combination of limiting con-straints, internal and external is possible, explaining the ewident multitude of unique recorded Łnstances. for autonomous local ciwilisations of the ancient world, a continuous exploitation of naturę's largesse over centuries of abuse, posed limits to expansion, compounded by the concommitant adwerse effects of wars,¹⁴² and cultural pollution. Of these ills, deforestation and soil exhaustion haue been almost synonymous with cultural actiwity worldwide. Moreower, every other contemporary culture formed part of a hostile enwiron-mental challenge, so that each ciwilisation faced a contest for supremacy between competing local protagonists.

Thus through the agency of autocatalytic Chain reactions the interplay of positiwe factors generated an exponential positiwe expanslon. Due to the total mix of population, culture and enwironmental factors, it was Lnewitably followed by the dominance of negatiwe factor interactions leading to a sedate or a rapid decline. The dramatic intrusion of expansion and decay depended, in ewery case, therefore, on the oscillating shifts from growth creating to growth destroying behaviour. With the omniscience of a historical hindsight we can justly marwel at the achiewements of these early ciwilisations, for it is patently ewident that they operated in a bl ind uoid of absolute self-ignorance, completely and utterly oblivious to the naturę of the interacting feedback mechanisms that generated aduance and regression. Far greater self-awareness plus knowledge of the functioning of the culture system might hawe prowided sufficient information for them to recognise impending danger signals as disasters accumulated, so that they could take awoiding action before being totally overwhelmed.

Ali open, adapting, liwing Systems receive information from the enwironment which can help in the struggle for surviv/al. The failed ciwilisations of the past ignored these crucial information signals - although in their defence it must be said they lacked the essential theoretical knowledge of how the culture system operates. Crisis management, through fighting a continuous rear-guard action could not, in the long run, stawę off the ultimate demise.

Successfułly Adapting Civilisations

The theory suggests three typical trajectories; premature extinction, the fuli life cycle, or successful adaptation. Yet we cannot point to one elear successful adaptation, or are we the heirs of the only possible example? We hawe seen how the brilliant Greek ciwilisation was able to coalesce into a cohesiwe entity within four brief decades, and how Romę was transformed from the chaos of anarchie ciwil destruction to the Pax Romana in an eąually brief timespan. Counting back forty years into our recent past takes us to a world prostrated by the exhaustion of total warfare, surely the lowest trough in the continuing history of a ciwilisation, perhaps stretching back in one unending curwe to the rise of the Italian city-states and the attendant spreading European Renaissance. If we can wiew the horrendous experiences of the first half of this century as a true breakdown of an old equilibrium which ended not in a total systems collapse but in a proper dissipatiwe structure, then the optimistic possibility exists that we may be liwing through a stepped ascent on the ciwilisation curwe.

To giwe cogent meaning to such a concept we hawe to return to the idea that ciwilisations can be graded. History certainly confirms that ciwilisation, usirig Professor Kluckhohn's triad, was widely present across ninth century Europę, and was clearly to be witnessed in the regimes of Alfred of England and Charlemagne of France. Moreower, the astonishingly rapid spread of Islam,