Every completed civilization known to historians has passed through a
sociological life cycle: origin, growth, expansion, maturity, violent
premature dismemberment and death in the competitive survival struggle
or gradual decline and eventual dissolution.
Every completed civilization has had small, local beginnings, on an
island like Crete, or a group of islands like the Japanese Archipelago,
or a tiny spot like Latium on the Tiber River, or an isolated area like
the desert-surrounded Nile River Valley in Africa. The seed ground or
nucleus of each civilization has been a small, well-knit group of
vigorous, energetic people, well-led, living in an easily defended,
limited area, enjoying relative isolation, but also having ready access
to the outside world.
At the beginning the growth cycle has moved slowly, from victory to
victory, as competing neighboring peoples have been brought under the
authority of the victor in local wars. After generations or centuries of
struggle a point is reached at which the nucleus of the growing empire
begins to expand, through trade, colonization, diplomatic alliances,
conquest, into an era of survival struggle in which rival cities reach
out for the same piece of fertile land, the same markets, the same
mineral deposits. Again the life and death survival struggle tests out
the people, their leaders, their ambitions, determination, tenacity.
Earlier struggles were local.
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