Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Of course, before all of the above came Rome, and before Rome ancient Greece: both of
which, in William McNeill's choice words, constituting the antechambers of the “anciently
civilized” world that began in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and spread from there, through
Minoan Crete and Anatolia, to the northern shore of the Mediterranean. Civilization, as we
know, took root in warm and protected river valleys such as the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates,
and continued its migration into the relatively mild climates of the Levant, North Africa,
and the Greek and Italian peninsulas, where living was hospitable with only rudimentary
technology.
But though European civilization had its initial flowering along the Mediterranean, it
continued to develop, in ages of more advanced technology and mobility, further to the
north in colder climes. Here Rome had expanded in the decades before the start of the com-
mon era, providing for the first time political order and domestic security from the Carpath-
ians in the southeast to the Atlantic in the northwest: that is, throughout much of Cent-
ral Europe and the region by the North Sea and English Channel. Large settlement com-
plexes, called
oppida
by Julius Caesar, emerged throughout this sprawling, forested, and
well-watered European black-soil heartland, which provided the rudimentary foundation
for the emergence of medieval and modern cities.
6
