NATURALISTS' FIELD CLUB

Evening Star, Issue 25005, 26 October 1943, Page 5

NATURALISTS' FIELD CLUB

Dr Skinner was the speaker at Monday night's meeting of the club. His subject was ' The Origin of European Civilisation.' "What is civilisation?" said the speaker. " Ethnologists define it as that part of culture which deals with plants, animals, the invention of the loom, pottery, and the discovery of how to produce metals from Nature. Of the plants on which civilisation depends, the cereals wheat and barley are the most important. In Syria, Abyssinia, Northern Palestine, and Western Afghanistan these were found in earlier ages. The animals, ox, sheep, pig, dog, and ass also occurred wild in the same regions. The discoveries made by archaeologists indicate that civilisation originated in the Middle East. " Culture is all that society has that it does not owe to biology, such as parents, stature, pigmentation of skin, etc., and social sources. Language is a cultural feature. Culture began in the Stone Age approximately half a million years ago. This was first, elaborated in the Middle East, Persia, and Syria, till great brilliance was attained. Civilisation then became controlled by despots. This caused stagnation and what is now known as ' The Changeless East.'

" European civilisation in contrast changed in its outlines, and has progressed because of the different environments through tfhich it passed. When huge mammals went across the plains of Europe it was then a.hunters' paradise. The inhabitants had leisure to record on walls of limestone caves and on rocks drawings of these mammoth animals."

Slides were shown of this art of probably 16,000 years ago, the- outstanding quality of which was realism.