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284 The Origin of Civilisation

In theory, there musi be sonę limit to the number of rises that can occur aloog the stepped ascent of the ciwilisation trajectory, and the finał leap would take Homo sapiens sapiens to the fuli extent of his knowledge resouce-fulness. Any further adwance might then require a morę highly organised or better differentiated brain capacity than currently exists. Further cultural dewelopment could again arise, but it might need a conjunction of anatonical cerebral changes with sonę associated enhanced cultural adaptations, working as usual, around an autocatalytic chain reaction cycle. Such a postulate, therefore, supposes that modern man will not be the last species of Homo to liye on Earth.

Exploring this wide rangę of possible options for the futurę course of man's cultural ewolution, giues a clue to why we can think of the last few centuries as either a typical sigmoidal curwe, shown in Figurę 5.2 (on page 265), or as the stepped ascent of international civilisation (Figurę 5.3 on page 266). The shape of the curve will wary, according to the time dimensions it cowers. Figurę 5.2 has a time scalę of 1100 years, while Figurę 5.3 only covers a fiwe hundred year period, from 1300 to 1987. The longer the time frame the greater the possibility for smoothing out localised fluctuations on the curwe. This smoothing process will clearly be obserwable if we tried to forecast the futurę trajectories ower the next few centuries, to conforn to the theoretical possibilities we hawe postulated. But these outcomes might then take us back to the typical culture curwes we examined in chapter 3, (Figurę 3.8 on page 98),

Ewen if the reality of a uniwersał ciwilisation should corne to fruition within the next fiwe hundred years, we know that mank ind has been an unstable, or rapidly adapting species for at least tmo million years. Horę-ower, it is possible that the last Ice Age has not finally disappeared, so that we could now be liwing through a marmer interstadial or interglacial phase, which will ultinately yield to the return of another intense glacial spell, within the next few millennia.¹⁹⁰ Thus, sińce both human culture and the planetary enwironment are currently undergoing a period of instability, the chances that one uniwersał ciwilisation could endure ower unnumbered millennia certainly look somewhat remote. For well into the futurę we must reckon that planet Earth and man, its most dominant species of the geological moment, are locked in a non-equillbriura state of perpetual interacting fluctuation. Perhaps we are destined to be a transitional species preparing the ground for a stable wersion of Homo whose existence on Earth still lies in the remote unforeseeable futurę.

References and Notes on Chapter 5 The Civilisation Phenomenon

1.    E.O.Wilson, 1980, p 293 & p 307; I.Prigogine & l.Stengers, 1984, p 133, define autocatalysis in molecular biology as "the presence of X accelerates its own synthesis."

2.    E.O.Wilson, 1980, p 307.

3.    The World Book Encyclopaedia, Vol 1, 1967, pp 828-33; R.L.Hurray, 1973, chapter 12, pp 108-13; "The Marshall Cavendiah lllustrated Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology," 1979, pp 882-83.

4.    A.S.Guha, 1981, pp 92-3, also p 108. He suggests a unitary authority over the entire region was needed to ensure military security; to supp-ress rebels and repulse the nomadic inuader from the north west: its rise was therefore a matter of geographical necesaary. This madę possible the immemorial unity of the Chinese Empire.

5.    G.Herm, 1973; B.H.Warmington, 1960; G.Picard, 1964.

6.    H.W.F.Saggs, 1984.

7.    R.Fletcher, 1981; J.Oates, 1979; M.Grant, 1978.

8.    R.McC.Adams & H.J.Nissen, 1972, p 90.

9.    J.E.Pfeiffer, 1977, chapter 8, pp 171-92.

10.    Ibid.

11.    R.McC.Adams & H.J.Nissen, 1972, p 92; G.Roux, (1964), 1977 chapter 10, pp 149-63; J.Oates, 1979, p 43.

12.    C.G.Starr, 1962; M.I.Finley, 1970.

13.    J.Oates, 1979, pp 65-82.

14.    Ibid, pp 126-31.

15.    C.Aldred, (1965) reprint 1978.

16.    A.Leahy, "Egypt and the Outsidera," lecture given at 'Egypt and Greece -Insiders and Outsiders,' a Oay School held at Birmingham Uniuersity,

May 4th, 1985.

17.    Ibid.

18.    P.Warren, 1976, chapters 4, pp 68-81, and chapter 5, pp 92-110: G.A.Christopoulos & J.C.Bastias, eds, 1970; N.E.Platon, 1970, pp 142-68, and pp 174-97.

19.    Ibid.

20 R.Fletcher, 1981.

21.    J.W.Plumb, writing an introduction to A.Andrewes, "The Greek World," gives an evocative description of the pervading sense of despair gener-ated by the sickening saga of World War 1 followed by the degradations and brutalities of the interwar years, and then, in 1939, by the renewed struggle of World War 2. This feeling of intense disillusion is echoed

in the introduction to L.Mumford's two books written between the wars, "Technice and Ciuilization," 1935, and "The Culture of Cities," 1938.

22.    R.G.Glenday, 1944, p 3, for example, considered the UK ecomony was peak-ing out - the Industrial Revolution had run its course.

23.    D.S.Landes, 1969, pp 489-90; W.W.Rostow, 1960, p 236, writes, "The converging motiues which determined American acceptance of the respons-ibilities and costs of the Marshall Plan were, of course, numerous," but in his opinion, "on balance the issues were determined, (like the issue of Lend-Lease in 1941), by the American judgements that its own long-run political and military futurę depended on the survival of societies in western Europę based on a recognisably Western conception of the proper relations between the individual and the state." B.de Jouvenal, "L'Amerique en Europę:Le Plan Marshall et la cooperation intercontinent-ale," Paris, 1948.

24.    "The Marshall Cavendish Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology," 1979, pp 833-4.

25.    S.N.Kramer, 1963, p 43.