If the space travellers moved west, they would pass over the islands of Japan, inhabited by a race who moved down from Siberia; the Japanese are as primitive as the American Indians; they wear clothes of bark and skins and live by fishing and hunting, with a little agriculture. China at first seems another empty continent, for it contains very few human beings in comparison to its size; its largest pocket of civilisation is to be found in the extreme east, in the Shantung peninsula, and the capital, Anyang, is located on a bend of the Yellow River. Here the upper classes live in wooden houses built on platforms of earth, and they wear linen, wool and even silk. But most of the people of China are peasants who live in clay huts, just above the flood level, in extreme misery and poverty. Canals have not yet revolutionised the agriculture of China, so the areas of cultivated land are hard to see from the air. A middle-aged philosopher named K’ung, later latinised as Confucius, has just set out on his travels, looking for a wise ruler who will put his precepts into practice; but he will die without finding him.
The sub-continent of India is in much the same stage of civilisation. There are parts where life has not advanced beyond the Stone Age. In the north, the Aryans have brought their culture and their religion, and the number of temples points to a highly developed religious life. In fact, Gautama, the Buddha, is now alive, and has achieved a far wider acceptance than his contemporary Confucius in China. But then, his philosophy of renunciation is appropriate in this poverty-stricken land. Another great teacher, Mahavira, is also wandering around and preaching; his doctrine is closer to the ideas that Jesus will preach five centuries later: reverence for all life. As the travellers move westward, along the Indus valley, they observe that these human beings are more interested in conquest than in high moral doctrines; the Persian king Darius is in the process of adding this part of India to his empire. And as they move west towards the (Caspian Sea, the travellers will observe the first signs of a great civilisation: the mighty cities with their walls, temples and palaces. This Persian Empire has no less than four capitals: Persepolis, Babylon, Susa and Ecbatana, and its towns and provinces are joined by long, straight roads with post stations every few miles. Yet in a mere ten years from now, in 490 B.C., the Greeks will call an abrupt halt to the spread of this great empire at the battle of Marathon.
And so the travellers come to the true centre of civilisation on this blue-green planet: the Mediterranean. They can observe Athens in its finest period, and Sparta at the height of its power. The Roman republic has only just come into existence, and is being threatened again by her old enemy – and neighbour – the Etruscans. This new republic is healthy, vigorous, and full of high ideals – many of them derived from the Greeks; the centuries of warfare, murder and betrayal lie ahead. Across the Mediterranean, Carthage is already a sea power and has waged several successful wars – at this stage it looks like the chief contender for the position of master of the Mediterranean. Darius the Persian has not penetrated that far to the west, and he never will; but he has conquered Egypt. And the Jews, only just back in Jerusalem from their Babylonian exile, are also subjects of the Persian monarch.
As to the lands of northern Europe, these are now dominated by a mysterious warrior-race called the Celts – a race quite as remarkable in their way as the Greeks and Romans. They are artists, mystics and nature worshippers; they believe that woodlands are full of tiny nature spirits called fairies. Unlike the Romans, these mighty warriors are dreamers, with a strong tinge of pessimism. They are now masters of Germany, France and England. The one civilised art they have not yet acquired is writing, and this explains why we now know so little about them.
This, then, is the world as seen from a space ship in the year 500 B.C., and the visiting scientists would find it an exciting and intriguing place. We can imagine them compiling a report which runs something like this:
For reasons not yet determined, the upright creatures on this planet have entered a sudden phase of accelerated evolution. We can state this with authority since the simpler and less evolved type still exists in large numbers, and their mode of existence is primitive. Yet we have also observed among them thinkers and philosophers who have achieved an astonishingly high level of abstract thought. This is all the more remarkable since their technical achievements are unimpressive, except in mere size, and their scientific insight is almost non-existent.
We theorise that their evolution has been accelerated by acute survival problems, and that it has proceeded in two directions at once: aggression and intellectual insight. The aggressiveness means that their more highly civilised types are almost permanently involved in warfare. Yet their finest thinkers show a truly remarkable degree of insight and self-knowledge. It seems to us an interesting question which of the two will cancel out the other.
Our neuro-physiologist believes he knows why they are so aggressive. All brains on this planet are bi-compartmented, to permit the creature to monitor and regulate its conduct through self-criticism. Survival problems have apparently driven the human creature to go farther than this, and to devote one half of its brain to scanning the material world for dangers. The absurd result is that when they have achieved conditions of peace, in which they can afford to relax, they are unable to switch off this danger-scanning device, and can only release the tensions thus created by going out and looking for challenge – i.e. war.
The problem is increased by a robotic learning device, through which these creatures can store a remarkable amount of information derived from past experience. Unfortunately, this has become so efficient in the case of their ‘civilised’ beings that they are at the mercy of their mechanical reactions, and their intuitive awareness of this makes them inclined to regard themselves as machines. As we see it, this low level of self-esteem, combined with an obsessive need to seek excitement in order to feel fully alive, constitutes the greatest danger faced by this interesting species.
Now let us imagine that the same expedition has returned to earth one thousand years later. It can see from a considerable distance that the planet is passing through another of its fluctuations in climate and is far more dry than on the previous occasion. Large areas that were formerly green are now brown; some have even become deserts. The Caspian Sea, for example, has dropped by several feet in the past five hundred years and is consequently a great deal smaller.
The travellers begin their survey over Australia and New Zealand, which they find almost unchanged from the earlier visit. In South America, civilisation has expanded dramatically; the Mayans have now created something like an empire in the northern part of South America; in Peru there are no less than three major cultures, including the Incas. But their level is roughly that of the ancient Egyptians or Sumerians more than three thousand years earlier. The Indians of North America are still virtually Stone Age hunters.
In the islands of Japan, civilisation is seen to be evolving at an unhurried but steady pace. They are a peaceable nation, these ‘dwarfs’ (as a Chinese traveller of 400 A.D. called them). Their farming methods have steadily improved and they have learned the art of weaving, so they are no longer dressed in skins. They have already a rigid sense of social order and bury their noblemen in great earthen mounds. Chinese influence is strong – and the Japanese are eager to learn from their Chinese neighbours. There are, of course, local wars, and one great prince from the southern island of Kyushu has set up his capital on the Nara plain on the central island. But it seems clear that this race will not be torn apart by violent convulsions. They love nature, and their simple religion – Shinto – is basically a form of nature worship. Everyone seems to ‘know his place’, and they have deep respect for their aristocrats and rulers. The neuro-physiologists of the team might speculate that the peaceable development of their civilisation is due to the fact that the Japanese brain seems to be less ‘divided’ than that of Europeans; its left half seems to process intuitions and patterns as well as words and ideas so that the Japanese still possess some of that unity of the earliest human beings. Yet this may also explain why the Japanese are less inventive than the Chinese, and are so fascinated by their more turbulent neighbours.