Cradle of Humanity
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[edit] Use of the Term
All human cultures contain myths about the origin of humankind, and attempt to anchor these stories through reference to historic times and places, known to them. These myths must be recognised as culturally important "truths", (from the Greek word "muthos", meaning "truth"), which aim to give "meaning" to life and the world.
For example, amongst the people of Southern Iraq, amongst the early Sumerians the semi-mythical land "Dilmun" was the site of creation, and these stories may have contributed to the later Biblical stories about Eden. In Ancient Egypt in the Memphite theology of Ptah the creation occurred with the appearance of the benben with the act of the God Atum. Amongst the ancient Greeks, various conceptions of creation of Humankind were entertained, often associated with the appearance of the Goddess Gaia. This creation was implicitly associated with the story of the omphalos, or the navel of the world, located at Delphi. In India, the creation of Humanity is associated with the semi-mythical homeland of the Aryan peoples, located somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Meru, located to the north of the Himalaya Mountains. Traditional Chinese mythology associates the cradle of humanity with the Yellow River of Northern China, the confluence of the Huang Ho and the Wei River.
The evangelical Protestants of the 19th century, considered the inventors of the term Cradle of Humanity, made generalized but undocumented claims that the term originated in Mesopotamia in the 2nd century, and that it was used by early non-christian Arabs, to refer to a geographic area that falls within a 1,000 mile radius of the spot they believed to be the birthplace of humankind. No documentation of such a historical use has been forthcoming. Nevertheless, the term has been used not only in religious, but also in secular contexts, and may therefore refer to different locations, depending on the views of the user.
Cradle of civilization is a title claimed by many regions of the world, but is most often applied by Western and Middle Eastern educated scholars to the ancient city states of Mesopotamia. Scholars educated in other parts of the world look at the question differently. There are five rivers that scholars cite as being possible sites for the 'Cradle of Civilization.' They are: the Tigris-Euphrates in modern day Iraq, the Halil rud in modern day Iran, the Nile in Africa, the Indus in South Asia, and the Huang-He-Yangtze in China.
The civilizations that emerged around these rivers are among the earliest currently known attempts humanity made at establishing non-nomadic agrarian societies and they all date back thousands of years. But it is due to the fact that Ubaid, Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon civilizations all emerged around the Tigris-Euphrates, the theory that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilizatons might be the strongest. It's also due to the fact that Ubaid (5500 B.C.)is the oldest civilization known to exist was in the same area.Ubaid Civilization
Another 'cradle of civilization' is a non-river based area known as Mesoamerica. This is the region where the the Olmec civilization began in about 1500 B.C.
The convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers produced rich fertile soil and a supply of water for irrigation causing this particular region to be referred to as the Fertile Crescent. However, it is clear that similar conditions in other fertile river locations prompted nomadic people in that given region to form a sedentary, agrarian community and thus, also become a first "Cradle of Civilization." It is not clear where the actual beginning took place or whether there were many beginnings in many locations so that mankind's societal development cannot be attributed to only one primary location.
[edit] Evolutionary View
Scientists have also sought to locate the "Cradle of Humanity". In the European Enlightenment, the general view was that modern Humanity first appeared in Central Asia, and this remained the dominant view of science, until the publication of two books by Charles Darwin - "On the Origin of Species" and the "Descent of Man". Scientific evidence for the origin of humankind was discovered a little earlier with the beginnings of paleoanthropology in August 1856, with the discovery of what we now recognise as the fossil of Homo neanderthalensis, which was found in Valley of the Neander River i.e. the Neanderthal, Germany. The discovery was announced in 1857, two years before the publication of Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. Despite this early fossil, this did not challenge the earlier views of the contemporary scientific establishment that the Cradle of Humanity was to be found in Asia.
This view was challenged by Charles Darwin. Based upon the fact that amongst the Great Apes, Chimpanzees and Gorillas are found in Africa, whilst only the Orangutan is found in Asia, Charles Darwin considered that Africa, rather than Asia, may be the Cradle of Humanity.
Darwin's view of Africa was challenged by Ernst Haeckel, who believed that Humanity evolved from the primates in Lemuria, a hypothetical geological "land bridge", which prior to the acceptance of continental drift which was believed to link Africa, India and South East Asia.
In 1891, Eugène Dubois, who accepted Haeckel's views, discovered a group of hominid fossils at the site of Trinil, on the banks of the Bengawan Solo River in Java, Indonesia. The find was originally named Pithecanthropus erectus, and popularly known as Java Man, Dubois later renaming it Homo erectus in 1894. This was the first discovery of early hominid remains outside of Europe, and led to a revival of the theories that Asia was the homeland of humankind.
But evidence was quickly forthcoming of early human "ape-men" elsewhere. In 1907, at the Mauer sand pits in Germany, a quarry worker found an almost complete mandible, which was designated Homo heidelbergensis by Otto Schoetensack. Since then fossilized remains attributable to Homo erectus have been found also in South Africa, Asia, England and China. But where did these Homo erectus come from?
The 1924 South African discovery of Australopithecus africanus at Taung by Raymond Dart, a pioneer of African paleontology, resurrected Darwin's hypothesis by suggesting that the material was a hominid. Later finds showed that it had a brain capacity little more than a chimpanzee (about 480 cc compared to Modern men 1300 cc) Nevertheless, his use of both Latin ("australo") and Greek ("pithecus") in naming the specimen resulted in the creation of a new genera other than "Homo" in the human lineage. Since then, the new genus-label created by Dart has become accepted as the designation to be used for the entire group of early hominids found in Africa.
By 1939, in the light of other new discoveries in Southern Africa, of the Australopithecus africanus the question of human origins was reevaluated and a number of paleontologists reconsidered South Africa as the possible option for the "cradle of humanity". A find made by a young schoolboy named Gert Terblanche at Kromdraai, South Africa, in 1938, led the eminent scientist Dr. Robert Broom to suggest a second Australopithecus species - Australopithecus robustus. Broom later found several more cranial and mandibular fragments that came to be associated with A. robustus. Broom published the results of his extensive research on the australopithecines in 1946, which marked a crucial turning point for South Africa in the eyes of the global evolutionary community establishing it as the new African "cradle of humanity".
The 1959 discovery by Mary Leakey of a specimen known as OH5 or "Zinj" in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania is considered by many the watershed in paleoanthropological history. First named Zinjanthropus boisei, later classified as Australopithecus boisei, and now as Paranthropus boisei, this find did not affect prevailing views regarding the location of the "cradle of humanity" the way Homo habilis did only a year later.
Estimated at the time of its discovery in 1960 to be approximately one million years older than Australopithecus robustus, the Homo habilis find at first created a bit of a problem: The name given to it literally means "handy man", and was chosen because of the collection of stone tools that were discovered near the specimens. Further, its height and brain size were larger than those of the australopithecines, and it appeared to be less robust. In other words, this older Homo habilis specimen seemed more advanced than comparatively recent ones.
While the role of Homo habilis in human evolution is still not settled, its discovery by the distinguished team of Louis Leakey, John Napier, and Phillip Tobias did result in Tanzania being regarded as the "cradle of humanity" for the following two or three decades.
In 1974 Donald Johanson found the famous "Lucy", the most complete skeleton of an australopithecine to date, that firmly established the group as an intermediate between apes and humans. Together with anthropologist Timothy White, Johanson named the specimen Australopithecus afarensis. Mary Leakey discovered a set of human footprints at Laetoli, which were later thought to be Afarensis prints and by the end of 1980, the heated dispute seems to have been settled and Australopithecus afarensis was widely accepted as a new first human ancestor.
Dated at almost four million years old, A. afarensis, Found in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia became the oldest hominid fossil yet on record, granting Ethiopia the position as the new "cradle of humanity".
The French magazine 'Science et Vie' made the displacement of Lucy its cover story in its May 1999 edition. The magazine considered Lucy, regarded as the most important fossil specimen of the species Australopithecus afarensis to date, under the caption ‘Adieu Lucy’ (‘Farewell Lucy’) and wrote that the apes from the Australopithecus species did not represent the origin of man and should be removed as the earliest Hominid ancestor. (Isabelle Bourdial, "Adieu Lucy", Science et Vie, May 1999, no. 980, pp. 52-62)
The discovery of a fossil temporarily called "Toumaï" (or hope of life in the South Chad language, Goran), estimated at an age of seven million years, the oldest hominid found to date, in the catchment of Lake Chad, has led some to question the African Rift Valley as the Cradle of the evolution of Hominids. A team of researchers led by paleontologist Michel Brunet uncovered an almost complete cranium and lower facial bones of this ancestor that appears to have lived at the point of transition between apes and hominids and for which they have suggested the name Sahelanthropus tchadensis. The location of the find in the Sahel region, a semiarid zone of mid-west Africa that separates the Sahara from the southern tropical forests, has led to the suggestion that the "cradle of humanity", the point at which the eventual human lineage separated from that of the Apes, may have been more in central or western Africa.
While accepting an African origin of the hominids, debate still rages over the site of origin of anatomically modern human beings. The earlier view, presented by Carlton Coon and other evolutionary scientists (eg Wolpoff, Alan Thorne), considered the possibility that modern humans may have evolved simultaneously in several locations on several continents along parallel evolutionary lines, finally engaging in trans-continental migration and interbreeding at the stage of Homo erectus or even later. Known as the "Multi Regional Hypothesis", proponents of these theories consider the discussion on a single evolutionary "cradle of humanity" is not useful.
Others led by Chris Stringer, based upon the fact that the earliest evidence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens is found at Kibbish Omo, and accepting the genomic evidence of Mitochondrial Eve and Y chromosome Adam, consider East Africa to have been once again the specific location as the "cradle of humanity".
Today, the accepted scientific viewpoint among biologists and paleoanthropologists is that mankind evolved through natural selection, and when journalists and popularizers currently usually use the term "Cradle of Humanity", it is intended to refer to Great Rift Valley sites in East Africa, where the oldest hominid fossils have been found. Based upon a range of evidence it is believed that the earliest hominids evolved from apes between 5-7 million years ago, in this area, whilst modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) only emerged much later, some time about 150,000-200,000 years ago, possibly in the same region of eastern Africa. Since 2002, however, several groups of prominent paleontologists have begun to challenge East Africa's position as the evolutionary "cradle of humanity", for all hominids, most notably because of the fossil hominid partial skull found in Chad in July 2002. The appearance of the earliest hominids outside Africa focuses on the Liujiang hominid of China, the Dmanisi fossils of Georgia and the Mungo Man fossils in Australia. See also: Origin of Species, Darwinism, Dmanisi Expedition
[edit] Creationist View
Modern fundamentalist Jewish, Christian and Muslim creationists disagree with these evolutionary views and believe that man was created by God in a place called Eden and then placed in a garden located east of Eden. In the Bible, Genesis 2:10-14 [1] it is said that the Garden of Eden was supplied by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The only evidence to support this view is the early Civilisations of Europe and the Middle East originated in the area of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Namely the early Sumerians and Phoenicians who seeded the creation of Carthage, along with several other North African, Mesopotamian, and European Empires.
See also: Creation
[edit] Group of Fifteen Lands
Based on the second century 1,000-mile "limit", the fifteen nations/territories that today comprise the "Cradle of Humanity" are, in alphabetical order: Bahrain, the Gaza Strip, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, the West Bank, and Yemen.
The radius of 1,000 miles from Eden as the limit of the Cradle of Humanity may have been "fixed" by the Christian authors of Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt in the pre-Islamic era.
By the arrival of the Ottoman period (1516–1918), the term had become well accepted throughout the majority of the empire, which extended into parts of southern Europe and exerted much cultural influence for over 400 years. Early in the 19th century, Protestant missionaries began to arrive in the region and found that the term provided a common ground for introducing their teachings to the local population.
There is no evidence that the term "cradle of humanity" has widespread use among Jewish or Christian creationists today, although Mesopotamian Christian Arabs seem to have been the ones to develop the term for describing an area roughly within a 1,000 mile radius of the location they believed to be the site of the Garden of Eden, based on the a passage, attributed to Moses, found in the Bible at Genesis 2:8–14:
- "A river watering the garden flowed upward from Eden, and from there it divided. It had four headstreams. The name of the first is Pishon. It winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the great river Euphrates."
While two of these names, Tigris and Euphrates, refer to rivers which border and define Mesapotamia, the rivers Gihon and Pishon cannot be identified. Cush refers to an ancient region to the south of Egypt, Nubia, in present-day Sudan. However, second century Christians, in spite of this ambiguity, identified the location of Eden at a point that, today, would be just west of the border between Iraq and Iran and just above the northern shore of the Persian Gulf.
A few isolated Christian denominations still appear to use the term, nowadays, as a nickname for "Eden" and when they do, the expression is usually capitalized as Cradle of Humanity. Despite this apparently "Christian" background, the term "Cradle of Humanity" seems to be more heavily used among Muslims, who tend to accept the 1,000 mile limit from "Eden" as the boundary for the area. This may stem from the popularization of the phrase during the period when these present-day states were all ruled by the Ottoman Empire.
[edit] Among those opposed to the term "Middle East"
The expression "Cradle of Humanity" is frequently used by persons opposed to the expression "Middle East" when, in their opinion that term would seem too ambiguous. They consider the lands of the "Cradle of Humanity" to be clearly defined within an unmistakable geographic limit. However, depending on the context in which the user applies the term "Middle East", it may or may not include countries in northern Africa, southern Europe and various parts of Eurasia east of the Ural Mountains.
Some cultural historians in the self-described "Cradle of Humanity States" (see map above) also find the thinking behind the terms Near East, Middle East and Far East offensive, since they are vestiges of British colonialism; a period when such expressions were coined based on the distance between England and the region in question. They often argue that, unlike the West Indies, where the present dominant culture was indeed largely formed under the influence of the colonizing powers, most of the dominant culture in so-called Near, Middle and Far East lands, predated the colonials and has actually survived their sometimes destructive influence.
