Norman Pedersen

The Seed of Civilization Norman Pedersen

We have long assumed that even the most primitive societies had certain minimal cultural absolutes: ceremonies for marriage, birth, death, and coming of age; leadership by strong, dominant, alpha males or sage elders; competitive games and play; religious ritual to intercede with the supernatural. Our assumptions have been completely wrong. We have ignored first-hand evidence and failed to connect that evidence to obvious correlation with our Stone Age ancestors. Civilization is not the result of hundreds of thousands of years of continuous human progress. The genesis of human Civilization had a seed, a direct and definable cause. People had lived a stable, unchanging lifestyle for 150,000 years before Civilization began. Then something changed. The question to be answered is, "If human beings were nonviolent for 150,000 years how and why did they become murderous, violent, and abusive?" Because that was not a small insignificant change. It was a radical, complete reversal of human behaviors and social order. The Seed of Civilization came from within human beings born after the advent of agriculture. It germinated and grew within the human psyche. It fostered a change in human behavior so disruptive that the species was in danger of extinction. Civilization became the solution and salvation.