n 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
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
Eurasi