【龙腾网】为什么欧洲没有像美索不达米亚、埃及等古代文明一样的文明？

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Matt Riggsby
When you say “like Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc.”, I assume you mean a pristine civilization, one which arose spontaneously and without outside influence. It looks like there are a few conditions preconditioning the rise of civilization. Europe didn’t have those conditions at the time when civilizations were appearing nearby, and the expansion and influence of those civilizations made the question moot shortly thereafter.

当你说“像美索不达米亚、埃及等”时，我想你指的是一个原始的文明，一个自发产生的、没有外部影响的文明。看起来有几个条件可以为文明的崛起做准备。当文明在附近出现时，欧洲并不具备这些条件，而这些文明的扩张和影响使这个问题在不久之后变得毫无意义。

Civilization requires a large subsistence base. Civilizations have to support significant numbers of centrally located non-farmers, so there needs to be a significant agricultural surplus. At the time the first civilizations were arising in Egypt and Mesopotamia, Europe was in the process of switching from hunting and gathering to agriculture, so most places in Europe weren’t even remotely ready to support urban populations.

文明需要一个庞大的生存基础。不同文明必须支持大量位于中心的非农民，因此需要有大量的农业盈余。当埃及和美索不达米亚出现第一批文明时，欧洲正处于从狩猎和采集向农业转变的过程中，因此欧洲大多数地方甚至还没有做好支持城市人口的准备。

Another significant theme in early civilizations appears to be resources which it’s difficult for people to walk away from. In most cases (Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus, Peru; the early Yellow River civilization is a little iffy on this point), civilizations seem to rise in river valleys going through deserts. They’re great places to live with easy transport and fertile land, but they’re surrounded by hostile wasteland. This leads to denser populations because people can’t spread out easily to avoid conflict and do their own thing. People have to come up with some way of mediating conflicts and otherwise dealing with one another when they can’t just leave. They end up inventing government and civilization. Similar mechanisms involving capital investment may be in play as well (if you’ve spent years working on an irrigation network or grape vines, you’re likely to accept more complex society than abandoning it all), but the point is that civilizations tend to arise from situations where people would prefer to stay in situations of increasing social complexity and population density than strike out on their own. And Europe, which doesn’t have deserts keeping people in fertile river valleys and hadn’t developed large holdings of capital-intensive resources like vineyards and irrigation networks yet, wasn’t nudging people towards civilization at the time.

早期文明中的另一个重要主题似乎是资源，这些资源对人们来说很难放弃。在大多数情况下（美索不达米亚、埃及、印度河流域、秘鲁；早期的黄河文明在这一点上有些不确定），文明似乎在穿越沙漠的河谷中兴起。这些地方是宜居的地方，交通便利，土地肥沃，但周围都是充满敌意的荒地。这导致人口密集，因为人们不能轻易地分散以避免冲突和做自己想做的事情。人们必须想出某种方法来调解冲突，否则彼此相处时。他们最终发明了政府和文明。类似的机制也可能参与了资本投资方面（如果你花了数年时间修建灌溉系统或葡萄园，你会接受比放弃更复杂的社会），但重要的是，文明往往出现在人们宁愿留在日益增长的社会复杂性和人口密度的情况下而不是独立闯荡的环境中。而当时的欧洲没有像沙漠那样的地方让人们待在肥沃的河谷中，并且尚未开发出资本密集型资源，例如葡萄园和灌溉网络，因此并未激励人们走向文明。

Now, you may have noticed that I keep saying things like “at the time” or “when civilization was arising in Egypt and Mesopotamia.” That’s another significant issue for a potential pristine European civilization. Left to its own devices, could Europe have built its own completely native civilization? Perhaps. It is no accident that the first urban society in Europe arose not just where Europe had the most sophisticated technology, but also where it was in direct contact with not one but two other civilizations. Contact with Egypt across the Mediterranean and the Mesopotamian cultural sphere in next-door southwestern Asia kickstarted European civilization, which combined elements of both with its own native cultures. Civilization came in from the outside before it could start inside.

你可能已经注意到了，我一直在说“当时”或“当文明在埃及和美索不达米亚兴起时”。这是潜在的原始欧洲文明的另一个重要问题。如果让它自行发展，欧洲能否建立自己完全本土的文明？也许可以。欧洲第一个城市化社会的出现并不仅仅是因为欧洲拥有最先进的技术，而且还因为它与不只一个文明直接接触。通过地中海与埃及的联系以及毗邻西南亚的美索不达米亚文化圈的联系，启动了欧洲文明，该文明将两者的元素与其本土文化相结合。文明在其内部开始之前就已经从外部进入。

Suzanne Marie Redalia Sullivan
Early European civilizations were not exactly like Mesopotamia or Egypt, but the Vinca culture of Eastern and Central Europe (5th and 6th millennium BC) appears to have had a writing system, similar to that of the Dispilio tablet, (5202 BC, Macedonia) and the Vinca culture developed into the Cucuteni culture, with writing similar to Byblos scxt, and agriculture, animal care, ceramics, stylized statues like those of the ancient Cyclades islands, woven textiles. In Varna, Bulgaria, a graveyard was found, dating from 4600–4100 BC, full of gold obxts amassed by people who had established a weapons trade network that stretched all the way to Spain. These people at Varna were also cattle breeders and some of the gold artifacts in the graves were buttons shaped like cattle. Another remark about the Cucuteni culture, some really large towns were built in their time, towns which held thousands of people. So if civilizations were just beginning in Eastern and Southern Europe during the Neolithic, what is known about Mesopotamia and Egypt during the Neolithic? Their civilizations were also just beginning then.

早期的欧洲文明并不完全像美索不达米亚或埃及，但东欧和中欧的文卡文化（公元前5和6千年）似乎有一个书写系统，类似于Dispilio碑（公元前5202年，马其顿），文卡文化发展为库库特尼文化，有类似于比布鲁斯文字的书写，以及农业、动物护理、陶瓷、像古代基克拉迪群岛的风格化雕像、编织的纺织品。在保加利亚的瓦尔纳，发现了一个墓地，时间为公元前4600-4100年，里面堆满了黄金制品，这些人建立了一个武器贸易网络，一直延伸到西班牙。瓦尔纳的这些人也是养牛的人，墓穴中的一些金器是牛的形状的纽扣。关于库库特尼文化的另一个说法是，在他们的时代，一些真正的大城镇被建造出来，这些城镇可以容纳成千上万的人。因此，如果新石器时代东欧和南欧的文明刚刚开始，那么新石器时代美索不达米亚和埃及的情况又如何呢？他们的文明在那时也是刚刚开始。

I think we should not overlook the Hittites, their civilization was contemporary with that of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but they lived in what is now eastern Turkey, which is part of Europe. The oldest buildings in Europe, carved with bas relief art of lions, scorpions, bulls, ducks and wild boar, are at Gobekli Tepe, Turkey, and are 11,500 years old. The people of Gobekli Tepe, too, could read and write. Stamp seals with writing similar to Proto-Canaanitic were found there.

我认为我们不应该忽略赫梯人，他们的文明与埃及和美索不达米亚同时代，但他们居住在现在的土耳其东部，那里是欧洲的一部分。欧洲最古老的建筑是在土耳其的戈比克利特佩，用浮雕艺术雕刻了狮子、蝎子、公牛、鸭子和野猪，有1.15万年历史。戈比克利特佩的人们也可以读写。那里发现了类似于原始迦南文字的印章。

Southern European ancient civilizations included the Minoans, who had a king, palaces, writing, trade, monuments, agriculture, and so forth. Similar cultures existed in pre-Roman Italy, which was occupied not just by Italian tribes, but also by Phoenicians in the south, Etruscans in the northwest, and Italo-Celts in the northeast.

南欧古代文明包括米诺斯人，他们有国王、宫殿、文字、贸易、纪念碑、农业等等。前罗马时代的意大利也存在类似的文化，不仅被意大利部落占领，南部的腓尼基人、西北部的伊特鲁里亚人和东北部的伊塔洛凯尔特人也占领了意大利。

Dinu Bogdan Marius
Maybe the correct answer is the Europe have had this kind of civilizations but the research work related isn’t yet completed.Recently (in 2017) the ruin of an very old town was discovered in Romania (Turdas area).Seems that is the oldest town in the SE Europe (dated 4200 BC with almost 2000 y before Egyptian pyramids). The surface of the town was estimated at 100 ha (means that is larger then Troy was) . The problem is that this huge area request too much money to made a full archaeologically work…

也许正确的答案是欧洲曾经有这种文明，但相关的研究工作尚未完成。最近（2017年）在罗马尼亚的图尔达斯地区发现了一座非常古老的城镇遗址。似乎这是东南欧的最古老城镇（公元前4200年，比埃及金字塔早了将近2000年）。该城镇的面积估计为100公顷（比特洛伊还大）。问题是，这个巨大的区域需要花费太多钱来进行全面的考古工作......

From another point of view the place where ‘Tartaria’ tablets was find (the tablets are considered as the first form of writing ) is situated into the same region and the dates seems to be in sync from the same period.

从另一个角度来看，“塔尔塔里亚” 石板的发现地（这些石板被认为是第一种书写形式）位于同一地区，而且日期似乎与同一时期相符。
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However without a strong research work is difficult to have a correct picture about what it was Europe., from civilizations perspective with more than 5 or 6 millennial’s ago.Basically any new discovery must be cheeked ,reviewed and reassessed . Based on this reuation the conclusions can be very different in comparison with what we know today about old Europe.

然而，如果没有强有力的研究工作，很难对欧洲有一个正确的了解。，从文明的角度来看，超过5或6个千年前。基本上，任何新发现都必须受到重视、审查和重新评估。基于这种重新评估，与我们今天对旧欧洲的了解相比，结论可能会大不相同。