Mediterranean with its multitude of islands, its broken coastline, and
its many safe harbors.

The Phoenicians developed their far-flung trading activities around the
Mediterranean as a waterway, and the tri-continental crossroads as a
logical center for a civilization built around business enterprise.

Aegean civilization occupied the eastern Mediterranean for approximately
two thousand years. Its nucleus was the island of Crete. Its influence
extended far beyond its island base into southern Europe, western Asia
and North Africa. Experiments with civilization on and near the Indian
sub-continent centered around the Indonesian archipelago and the rich,
semi-tropical and tropical valleys of the Ganges, the Indus, the Gadari,
the Irra-waddy and the Mekong. Although they were contiguous
geographically and extended over a time span of approximately two
thousand years they were aggregates rather than monolithic
civilizations, retaining their localisms and avoiding any strong central
authority.

Beginnings of civilization have been made outside the
Asian-European-African triangle centering around the Mediterranean Sea
and the band of South Asia extending from Mesopotamia through India and
Indonesia to China. They include the high Andes, Mexico and Central
America and parts of black Africa. In no one of these cases did the
beginnings reach the stability and universality that characterized the
Eurasian-African civilizations.