It seems to me that these discussions have cleared the ground for our understanding. Generalizations based on a limited historical experience, and theorizing, however ingeniously conducted, _must_ fail to disclose the individual character of any one civilization or of any one series of events. We must concentrate on what Ruth Benedict called the “selected segment of the arc of possible human behaviour,” “the characteristic purposes not necessarily shared by other types of society.” In our own terms: In studying the birth of a civilization we are concerned with the emergence of its “form.”
II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
At the end of our last chapter we said that the study of the birth of a civilization means watching the emergence of its “form.” We have also seen that this “form” is elusive, that it is not a concrete mould, or a standard which we can apply to our observations to see whether they conform with it. We have described it as “a certain consistency in orientation, a cultural style.” Recognizing it amounts to discovering a point of view from where seemingly unrelated facts acquire coherence and meaning. Even so the “form” of a civilization remains intangible; it is implicit in the preoccupations and valuations of the people. It imparts to their achievements—to their arts and institutions, their literature, their theology—something distinct and final, something which has its own peculiar perfection. Therefore a discussion of the emergence of form entails a knowledge of a civilization in its maturity, a familiarity with its classical expression in every field. Then it should be possible to work backwards from better-known to early times until the point is reached where the familiar phenomena are lost sight of and where, conversely, their emergence must be postulated.[36]
This procedure, however, has a double disadvantage. It obscures development because it moves against the current of time; and it fails to describe, first of all, the conditions under which the civilization took shape—in other words, its prehistoric antecedents. Now I am not prepared to attempt a definition of the distinction between prehistory and history in general terms, for even within the ancient Near East the distinction is problematical.[37] I shall simply use the term “prehistory” to denote the period preceding the emergence of Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization, and shall discuss first the climatic conditions in the Near East at that time and then the form of society which prevailed before the events with which we are primarily concerned took place.