Page 163 - The Tigris Expedition

The Tigris Expedition
pletely dwarfed. The modern residents of Ali had made a regular
industry out of quarrying these huge man-made hills, using the
limestone they extracted for burning lime. The result was that
between the work of the ancient grave-robbers and the modern
lime-burners the Ali mounds looked like gaping volcanoes that
! rose above the landscape. By climbing them one had a magnificent
I view over the endless stretches of smaller tombs that lay there like

innumerable spawn left in a breeding-place behind the giant turtles
of Ali. The colossi of Ali were amply spaced and majestically
located closer to the sea, whereas the adjacent cemetery of smaller,
dome-shaped hills continued inland and across the naked land­
scape, so closely packed that there was barely room to walk
between them. I could not help feeling that the colossi, with all the
space between them, antedated the closely packed fry. The big
ones seemed to have been built while there was still room to spare
in this locality, and the multitude of smaller mausolea was packed
close to them in a desire to be their neighbours.
It is usually taken for granted that things begin small and
afterwards grow into more impressive proportions. But not always
so with civilisations. There may be two reasons. Cultural growth
ends in most known cases with stagnation and cultural decadence.
The reasons for this might be anything from over-affluence to war,
pestilence or natural catastrophe. But in addition, at the peak of
evolution most civilisations tend to possess ships and be involved in
some kind of seafaring. At this advanced stage they may suddenly
escape invaders or travel in search of a better land. Families or entire
organised colonies may settle with an advanced cultural level in
areas previously uninhabited or occupied by some primitive so­
ciety. We should not be surprised then to find that most ancient
civilisations seem to appear without local background and often to
disappear again without a trace. We dig in search of the roots, and
expect every civilisation to have grown like a tree in the place we
find it. But civilisations spread like seeds with the wind and the
current once the tree is grown and in bloom. It would therefore be
wrong to suspect that only primitive savages could have settled at
Bahrain and that the giant tombs of Ali represent the local evolution
from the countless small ones, grown large through experience.
The pyramids of Egypt did not grow with time: the biggest were
built by the first Pharaohs; later they got smaller. The same
happened in Mesopotamia. And in Peru. Everything in Egypt
started big with the first dynasties, as in Mesopotamia and Peru.
Subsequent changes do not testify to cultural growth but to imita-
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