5000 to 3000 b.c.

Chapter 3-fifth&Fourth millennia b.c.

Backward to 5000 to 8000 B.C.

5,000 to 3,000 b.c.

Michael Cheilik (Ref. 28 ) from City University of New York, calls this period the Chalcolithic ( Chalcos = copper, lithos = stone). After draft animals were domesticated and wheeled vehicles were invented transportation over long distances became possible. A stage of intellectual development known as mythopoeic (myth-making) arrived and persisted for centuries. The forces of the universe became appreciated and personal. Sometime in this era came the "Dawn of Civilization" as in a few areas true civilizations appeared. It is probably not unbelievable then, that also at this period the weather and climate was the most ideal of the last 100,000 years, with the possible exception of our own time – the past one-half century. (Ref. 28 , 224 )

As we shall see in the development of this period of history, Egypt and Mesopotamia have long competed in the historians' annals for the honor of being the oldest source of civilization. Very recently carbon-14 dating and bristle-cone dendrology studies in correlation, have suggested that some of the Mediterranean islands (particularly Malta) may have had an advanced culture before such appeared in the fertile Nile Valley. (Ref. 164 ). Furthermore, recent Danish archaeological excavations on the island of Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf have revealed a civilization antedating that of Mesopotamia' The recent revision of the carbon dating has now even placed some of the stone towers and megaliths of the British Isles back to corresponding early dates. What does this mean? It is difficult to conceive of extensive civilizations developing only on islands. More probable is the thought that these islands were only refuges or way-stations for a seagoing people who had been dislodged by some catastrophe from their original homes, perhaps as yet undiscovered and unidentified. Coast lines have changed, old lands are now covered by seas, and many cities may yet lie buried under sand dunes, lava and ashes or water in many parts of the world. Along the Afro-Asiatic coasts much has changed even since the 5th century B.C. when Hanno sailed down the Atlantic African coast with sixty galleys and 30,000 settlers who established ports which have now become inland fields. The Romans discovered an old city on the Atlantic coast of Africa, already very ancient when they found it, with impressive sun-oriented, megalithic structures. They called this "Maqom Semes", "City of the Sun" or "Lixus, the Eternal City" and felt it to be older than any city inside the Mediterranean. These impressive ruins are now no longer on an island or the coast, but are half-buried on a headland on a ridge surrounded on all sides by flat fields of the Lucus River delta, with the ocean only barely visible in the distance. This is about three miles upstream from the modern city of Larache, Morocco, which is itself about seventy miles down the African coast from the Strait of Gibralter. Engle (Ref. 62 ) has reported that the ocean shore line in western South America about 6,000 years ago was much to the east of where it is today. Could not this also be true of the western coast of Africa? At any rate, in the ruins "A large Roman mosaic of Neptune bears witness to former links with the ocean, while the ruins of Arab mosques and Roman temples cover earlier Berber and Phoenician structures, refitted in turn from gigantic blocks hauled from far away by the unknown sun-worshippers who first chose this site"

Sudden changes occurred on Malta and Crete and Cyprus at about 3,000 B.C. with a sudden end to the Neolithic phase and the beginning of a major new era. If a geological occurrence about that time in the Atlantic was great enough to split Iceland, it seems possible that tidal waves would have caused far reaching disasters, forcing population groups to search for new lands, and such events could have been remembered in many peoples legends as the time of the great flood. As Alexander Marshack (Ref. 130 ) has written, “art, agriculture, science, mathematics, astronomy, the calendar, writing, cities - these things could not have happened "suddenly". The question is how and over how many thousands of years did the preparation require? (Ref. 130 , 95 , 61 , 164 )

Forward to 3000 to 1500 B.C.

Choose different region

• Africa
• America
• Central and Northern Asia
• Europe
• The Far East
• The Indian Subcontinent
• The Near East
• Pacific