Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

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THE PREHISTORIC CIVILIZATIONS
THROUGHOUT the classic East—in Mesopotamia, in Elam, in
Turkestan, and in Egypt—the dawn of civilized life is marked by
two phenomena, one characteristic of the neolithic age, the other
of the earliest metal periods. I refer to the splendid development
of pottery in the neolithic period, especially painted pottery with
naturalistic and geometric decoration ; and to the wonderful impetus
which civilization received, in all these places, at the metal epoch.
The painted pottery of Central Asia, of Susa, of Turkestan, of Mesopotamia,
of Asia Minor, of Egypt, still belongs to the prehistoric
period ; but in several of these regions the age of metals inaugurates
a historic period which is accompanied not only by artistic development
but also by written documents. The proto-historic epoch is
marked by rich civilizations which make copious use of metals,
especially copper and, later, bronze—never iron—and which we are
accustomed to call copper and bronze civilizations, on the analogy of
the prehistoric epochs in Central Europe, although the names are
singularly inappropriate to the abundant and varied life of the East
in the third millennium B.C.
Southern Europe passed through the same stages. No need to
speak of the brilliant Cretan or Aegean civilization, in which a period
of neolithic painted pottery, and a chalcolithic period, were succeeded
by a rich historic life, with which we are ill acquainted it is true,
but only because we are unable to decipher Aegean texts. We must
examine, however, the corresponding phenomena in the civilized life
of Central and Eastern Europe, seeing that the region of the Russian
steppes was one of prime importance, as the home not only of a
neolithic painted pottery but of a metal civilization of particular
splendour.
The two areas do not coincide. The painted pottery is characteristic
of the neolithic and chalcolithic epoch on the banks of the
great western rivers, the Dniester, the Bug, and the Dnieper, whereas
the metal culture principally flourished on the banks of the Kuban
at the other extremity of the steppes.
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