dependencies. The disintegration and collapse of Egyptian civilization
occupied only a small fraction of the time devoted to its upbuilding and
supremacy.

Before, during and after Egyptians played their long and distinguished
parts in the recorded history of civilization, the continent of Asia was
producing a series of civilization in four areas: first at the
crossroads joining Africa and Europe to Asia; then in Western Asia (Asia
Minor); in Central Asia, especially in India and Indonesia and finally
in China and the Far East.

Experiments with civilization during the past six thousand years have
centered in the Eurasian land mass, including the North African littoral
of the Mediterranean Sea. Within this area of potential or actual
civilization, until very recent times, the centers of civilization have
been widely separated geographically and temporally. Occasionally they
have been unified and integrated by some unusual up-thrust like that of
the Egyptian, the Chinese or the Roman civilizations. In the intervals
between these up-thrusts various centers of civilization have maintained
a large degree of autonomy and isolation. Only in the past five
centuries have communication, transportation, trade and tourism created
the basis for an experiment in organizing and coordination of a
planet-wide experiment in civilization.

Nature offered humankind two logical areas for the establishment of
civilizations. One was the cross-roads of migration, trade and travel by
land to and from Asia, Africa and Europe. The other was the
Mediterranean with its possibility of relatively safe and easy
water-migration, trade and travel between the three continents making up
its littoral. Both possibilities were brought together in the Eastern