The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c14.s2.1

c14.s2.1

Lastly, we come to those areas, which have become the blind-alleys of civilization in India. The knowledge of the development in the favourable areas, and the material life in the unfavourable environments, helps us to understand the stage when they were isolated. The essence of civilization is the progressive emancipation of man from the influence of his natural environment by its understanding, exploitation and finally its mastery. Thus there is always at any time, an essential equilibrium between the various factors like the physical environment, and human communities in relation to their material culture and technological achievement. When any one of these factors changes, the ecological balance is upset. Then the "adaptive vitality" of man provides an answer, which ultimately results in the progress or stagnation of the relevant human communities, depending on their degree of adjustment to the new conditions. It is idle to speculate, what would have happened if the Neolithic revolution did not take place in the Middle East. Yet, it is more interesting to recall that certain factors, which we need not enumerate here, operated in its favour.