considerable period elapsed, however, ere this consummation was
reached and Ancient Babylonia became completely Semitized. No doubt
its brilliant historical civilization owed much of its vigour and
stability to the organizing genius of the Semites, but the basis on
which it was established had been laid by the ingenious and
imaginative Sumerians who first made the desert to blossom like the
rose.

The culture of Sumer was a product of the Late Stone Age, which should
not be regarded as necessarily an age of barbarism. During its vast
periods there were great discoveries and great inventions in various
parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Neoliths made pottery and
bricks; we know that they invented the art of spinning, for
spindle-whorls are found even in the Gezer caves to which we have
referred, while in Egypt the pre-Dynastic dead were sometimes wrapped
in finely woven linen: their deftly chipped flint implements are
eloquent of artistic and mechanical skill, and undoubted mathematical
ability must be credited to the makers of smoothly polished stone
hammers which are so perfectly balanced that they revolve on a centre
of gravity. In Egypt and Babylonia the soil was tilled and its
fertility increased by irrigation. Wherever man waged a struggle with
Nature he made rapid progress, and consequently we find that the
earliest great civilizations were rooted in the little fields of the
Neolithic farmers. Their mode of life necessitated a knowledge of
Nature's laws; they had to take note of the seasons and measure time.
So Egypt gave us the Calendar, and Babylonia the system of dividing
the week into seven days, and the day into twelve double hours.

The agricultural life permitted large communities to live in river
valleys, and these had to be governed by codes of laws; settled