NEWS CENTER – In a new series of articles, the English Nûçe Ciwan will be publishing the 3 English translated works of the Manifesto for Democratic Civilization by Rêber APO (Abdullah Ocalan) chapter by chapter every 2 days.
Today we will start with the first work:
“Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization: The Age of Masked Gods and Disguised Kings”
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Introduction
- On Method and the Regime of Truth; Section 1
2.1 – Continuation
2.2 – What constitutes the Human Being?
2.3 – Continuation
2.4 – Moral metaphysics
2.5 – Continuation - The Main Sources of Civilization
As argued in the previous section, the best way to obtain insight into a specific society is through an examination of its historical and geographical conditions. We will turn to this now, as I try to analyze the main factors that have led to today’s civilization. From our earliest primate beginnings, it seems to have taken us at least seven million years to arrive at the agricultural revolution about 8,000 years ago. Paleontological evidence indicates that hominid species evolved in Africa from approximately 2.5 million years ago and spread from there to Asia and Europe. Homo Sapiens seems to have evolved in East Africa, around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, and soon afterwards started spreading around the globe from the East African Rift Valley during the so-called “first exit” out of Africa. In Africa, and later in other parts of the world, all hominid species are believed to have lived in clans of twenty to thirty people, sustaining themselves by gathering and hunting. Ownership and family had not yet developed but the clam system functioned as the extended family. It is believed that early Homo species mastered a communication system consisting of body and sound signs, but were not yet able to transform sounds into symbols. Nevertheless, this communication system brought many advantages such as the ability to act in unison when hunting or fighting. Research indicates that approximately 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens developed something akin to language. These studies also indicate that around 50,000 years ago a second wave of migration from East Africa, via the Rift Valley took place. Prior to the second exodus from Africa, humans had already obtained a communication system consisting of sounds with symbolic meaning-the origin of modern languages.
We can assume that the early humans, both inside and outside of Africa, lived in larger communities and hunted intentionally, that they used caves as dwellings and that women specialized in gathering and men in hunting. Some archaeological findings point to the fact that the species advanced rapidly during this time due to their obtaining symbolic thought. For instance, the incredible cave drawings from this period in the region of the French-Spanish border and in Hakkari, Kurdistan, attest to the fact that these humans possessed symbolic thought. There may even be a connection between the complex communication system of modern humans and the elimination of the other hominid species (amongst others the Neanderthals, who disappeared between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago).
The Contribution of the Taurus-Zagros Arc to Humanity
It is my contention that the Taurus-Zagros Arc —the so called Fertile Crescent— was the main gathering and dispersion point for humans as they exited Africathrough the East African Rift. In the first place, the Arc forms the end of the natural path of the Rift. The Great Sahara and the Arabian Desert block off the eastern and western entrances into Asia and Europe, leaving the Suez and the eastern Mediterranean shores as the natural paths for human expansion. This ideal path is the arc formed by the Taurus-Zagros Mountain range, off the eastern Mediterranean shores. Secondly, the suitable weather conditions, the huge numbers of shelters provided by the caves in this area, the abundance of streams and rivers, and the fertility that led to the creation of the image of “Paradise” in the memory of humanity —all made the Fertile Crescent the ideal gathering point, a “place of incubation” for civilizational development.
With their newly acquired ability of symbolic language, the extensive area of the Fertile Crescent provided its inhabitants a unique opportunity for societal development with its safe shelter and a ready food source? For the first time, humans made the transition from a nomadic life style to a culture of a settled life. The four seasons could be now be experienced together in all of their beauty. The new circumstances brought about a new life style-that is, a new cultural era, the Mesolithic. New terms were coined to name the new society, along with other concepts, new objects, new plants and animals, and all of them became part of the newly developing languages of the widespread communities of the Arc. Hence, new communities with new identities were formed in the Fertile Crescent.
In comparison to the Palaeolithic era that lasted a few million years, the Mesolithic period in the Arc was short-lived. Despite its short span, the Mesolithic period had a profound effect on this region, as attested to by the Hakkari caves and hewn stones. But the real progress was made in the Neolithic —an era we can call the Era of the Farming, Field and Village Revolution. It is a cultural era of which the importance has not yet been fully understood and which has not yet received the attention it deserves. The Neolithic inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent brought numerous inventions and revolutionary developments in areas such as agriculture, arts and crafts, transport, housing, administration and religion; inventions and developments that truly shaped the modern era.
It is here in the Arc that the shepherd culture was likely introduced by the Semites during a period of favorable weather conditions at the end of the fourth ice age around 10,000 years ago. The impact of this new life style is clear from the cultural importance that the accumulation of sheep, camels and goats still have in the Semitic culture today-in its essence the Semitic culture still is a shepherd culture. Furthermore, from the Sumerian and Egyptian tablets of the time, it is clear that they too valued the importance of the shepherd culture. It seems that the Semitic culture has left a permanent mark on a vast area from the Sahara and Eastern Arabia to the lands suitable for agriculture in the North. However, the Arians of the Arc were the pioneers of crop farming. (The Kurdish word ari means “related to earth, place, field.”) Archaeological evidence (charred seeds and chaff from barley, wheat and pulses) indicates that the earliest transition to agriculture took place in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic, more or less 1,000 years before pastoralism was introduced. The favorable weather conditions of the time, the soil structure, the streams coming from the glaciated mountain peaks, all contributed to the Arc being extremely suitable for growing olives, nuts, grapes, cereals, dates, pulses, and so forth. Wild sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, etc. roamed around in flocks. The forests on the mountain slopes provided the building material needed for the settled life style of crop farming and the copious streams and rivers offered suitable areas for settlement. In fact, under conditions like these, the development that took place here was almost inevitable.
By about 6,000 years ago, agriculture had spread from the Fertile Crescent into Europe, northern Africa and central and southern Asia. As agriculture spread, so did village settlement and farming techniques such as irrigation and terracing. And, as the culture spread, so did the Aryan language and cultural group. Thus, contrary to the common belief, the birth place of the Aryan language group is not Europe, India or the regions in-between (the areas of the northern Black Sea, the Russian steps or the Iranian plateaus) but the Fertile Crescent. It is of utmost importance that we understand this, because the history of the expansion of this big language and cultural group is vital for understanding the societal development of the urban civilizational phase and of modernity. Another contribution that is vital for modernity and has its origins in this period in the Fertile Crescent is monotheistic religion.
Problems Associated with the Expansion of Aryan Culture and Language
To fully understand modernity, we need to trace and understand the origin of the Indo-European civilization on which modernity is built. Historiography usually defines core cultures with reference to the time and location within which they exist. Historical conceptualization without reference to origin is, however, delusive and irresponsible. Instead of producing meaningful interpretation of historical knowledge. it produces misconceptions. I received some criticism on my analysis of the source of modern civilization as set out in Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization (the published form of the argument for my submission before the Court of Human Rights of the Council of Europe). I have been criticized for being excessively reductionist in postulating the Euphrates and Tigris basin, and hence the Sumerian civilization, as the foundation of modernity. After thorough consideration of this criticism, I still maintain that this postulation is valid. Just as today’s dominant civilization — capitalist modernity— rests upon Indo-European cultural roots, the IndoEuropean culture rests upon Aryan cultural roots and its Sumerian and Egyptian branches.
Of course the issues we are trying to analyze are not solely a matter of culture and civilization. But, if we do not determine the relative contribution culture and civilization made to social development, historiography will indeed be no more than “the trivia of the past” from which nothing meaningful can be learnt. Such numerical records of the succession of religions, dynasties, kings, wars and peoples are no more than ideological efforts to disguise social development and to prepare the social memory and mind for exploitation by the rulers. Without correctly identifying the main source of our civilization and its branches, we will not be able to understand today’s society nor solve its problems. Even if we wish to understand and end the atrocities in today’s Iraq, we need to acknowledge that our knowledge of sociology and historiography has failed. Only then may we be able to propose a new framework for historical and sociological analysis that will render meaningful results. All I am trying to do here is to make a small contribution to end this human tragedy. A further point of criticism against my analysis was my claim that Kurds are descendants of the Aryan language and cultural group —it was felt that, because Hitler laid claim to the notion of Aryanism, it may have a “racist” connotation. Let me just ask this in return: Because Hitler’s political party was the National Socialist Party, does this mean we should abandon the word socialism? Fascism quite successfully utilized various scientific and ideological notions for its own benefit, but this doesn’t mean that we should abandon science and ideology. I have no intentions of fostering a nationalism based on Aryan language and culture. On the contrary, I have argued strongly against nationalism.
I am compelled to summarize the arguments I set out in Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization:
a) Both the formation of a language and its being the foundation of a deep rooted culture depends on the historical and geographical preconditions. The period 10,000 to 4,000 BCE defines the “long term” (la longue durée) in which this language and cultural group institutionalized itself. During this period various inventions such as pottery, the plough, animals for farming, the wheel, weaving, manual grinders, arts and religion were institutionalized. A rich list of plant and animal products enabled the great increase in the population. Metals were not only used for tools, it was used to make rich works of art during the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age). We are still discovering examples of these today-houses and religious architecture made of hewn stone and many tools made of metals have been recovered from the archaeological sites of Bradostiyan at the skirts of Zagros, Cayonii (Diyarbakir) and finally Gobeklitepe (near Urfa) which is said to date back 11,000 years.
The cultural tools and words used even today by the local people to name these tools shed light on the identity of the core region. Words such as geo (location), ard (location, soil, field), jin (woman, life), roj (the sun), bra (brother), mur (death), sol (shoes), neo (new), ga (ox), gran (large, heavy), mesh (to walk), guda (god) are still used in European languages. These words are also used by Middle Eastern and Central Asian peoples such as
the Kurds, Persians, Balochi and others-clues that the Aryan language and cultural group is not of European or Indian origin. Sumerian tablets and other archaeological findings prove that this culture has existed at least
around six thousand years ago, when Europe and India were still in the “Old Stone Age.”
b) While I do not wish to deny the rich contribution of the Semitic language and cultural group, I cannot envisage that around 4,000 BCE the shepherd culture could have led to urban civilization culture. Although the civilization of the Egyptian Pharaohs is in the Semitic region, one cannot find evidence of contributions from the Semitic culture. The Egyptian documents also show that the Semitic culture is foreign to them. There are no similarities in the language structures. The Semitic culture takes its initial place in the written history around 2,500 BCE with the Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Canaan and Hebrew identities. The Arabic identity can be seen much later in history —around 500 BCE. Conceptualizations such as Arameans, Amorites and Habirus have first been used by the Sumerians and the Egyptians. It is thought that Phoenicians, Palestinians and even Hebrews have been integrated into the Semitic language and culture group at a later stage (as with the Egyptian Pharaoh culture). There is evidence that they initially had been immersed in the Aryan culture, but that they lost this identity under waves of Semitic migration.
The Sumerian sources and various archaeological records indicate that Semitic language and culture groups have attacked or migrated to the Aryan language and cultural region, possibly as far back as 5,000 BCE. Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Arameans and Arab colonies especially left their traces in Upper Mesopotamia. However, Assyrian and Arabic influences are much greater than the others. (When combined with Islam, it meant a greater force of assimilation, as Islam and Arabization are intertwined.) The Aryan language and culture group was able to resist these efforts of colonization, assimilation and incursion by counter attack, incursion, colonization and assimilation. The initial founders of the Sumerian civilization, leaders of the Egyptian civilization as well as the Hyksos and the Hebrews are examples of this. I think that the most acceptable interpretation is that the initial leaders of the Sumerians migrated to Lower Mesopotamia, carrying the Aryan core culture with them and transforming it to a more advanced level. This Aryan culture reached its peak in the Upper Mesopotamian region —Tell Halaf— around 6,000-4,000 BCE. Thus, the Sumerians should be viewed as responsible for the cultural expansion of the Tell Halaf era instead of some migrating groups. It does not make sense to look for Central Asian or Caucasian influences, as at the beginning of the Sumerian civilization (around 5,000 BCE): these areas were still in the Stone Age and had just begun encountering the Aryan culture. At the time, they simply had no means to sustain a culture such as that of the Sumerians. Physically, they would not have been able to overcome the Aryans. Just as European culture is propagated all around the world today, the Aryan language and culture too was propagated around the world, especially after it completed its institutionalization and experienced a population boom (especially in the Tell Halaf period between 6,000-4,000 BCE). Just as today a variety of poor cultural groups and laborers are lured to the safety that Europe offers, at the time such groups arrived in the Fertile Crescent and the Sumerian zone.
c) Thus, the Arian culture established and institutionalized itself at the Fertile Crescent. From there it moved further to the east-to the regions that are today called Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. I must emphasize that it was not the groups of people that migrated but the culture itself. Initial signs of this culture are encountered around 7,000 BCE in the Iranian plateaus and the culture was effective in India around 4,000 BCE. Its influence reached the Turkmenistan plateaus around 5,000 BCE. There is a school of thought that claims the previous cultural layer there had been of African Stone Age descent.6 Cultural remnants seem to substantiate this thesis. Just as in Egypt and Sumer, there is no theoretical or empirical evidence of a culture in this region that is solely the product of local development. Although some of my critics find this line of argumentation too reductionist, we should keep in mind that a limited number of cultural revolutions took place in history and that those were achieved only with the greatest difficulty. Furthermore, though European culture is quite unique in the world, the above-mentioned culture did have similarities with European culture and with the culture of the Fertile Crescent. In the third place, there is no theoretical evidence or archaeological remains indicating that groups that have lived according to the same habits for hundreds of thousands of years or groups that are at the threshold of being annihilated suddenly could come up with a fundamental cultural revolution. Hence we can assume that there was a cultural expansion to the east around 3,000 BCE leading to the urban civilization centered on Susa to the west of Iran in the Elam region. This expansion we can assume originated from Sumer.
Further east, the establishment of the cities of Harappa and Moenjo-daro (at the shores of the Punjab River in today’s Pakistan) in around 2,500 BCE, also embodied Sumerian influences. It is impossible to reason that they were the original institutions of some other cultural structures. If this were the case, then one would need to question why thousands of other groups at much more fertile geographical locations were unable to develop a civilization or a grand cultural revolution.
Undoubtedly, each and every region would have made its own contributions. Expansion and local acceptance of the culture is intertwined and mostly voluntary. Expansion is not that of the exploitative groups but rather of the more advanced material and moral values of production. The expansionist cultures that have demonstrated their abilities in this regard have always been seen as “sacred miracles of the gods.” It is important that we do not confuse cultural expansion that elevates the value of life both morally and materially with that of colonialism, occupation and forced assimilation. In fact, only a small number of cultural expansions have been achieved through brutal attacks, colonialism, and forced assimilation. The majority were accepted because they brought an advanced quality of life. However, because of the narrow nationalistic conceptualizations of history, the concept of cultural expansion is still not well understood. It is important not to fall into the traps of nationalism, which lead to denial, exaggeration, disguise and distortion-especially here, where we are attempting to establish a meaningful method of obtaining and interpreting knowledge. d. The relationship between the Aryan language and culture groups and that of the Indo-European language and culture groups may be one of the main
problems of historiography and therefore it is important to determine this relationship. There has been much speculation on this topic but a common interpretation has not been attained. In the 19th century, when it became clear that the Indo-European languages had much in common, much research was done. Various interpretations were made in relation to the main source of these groups. Some said the source was Greek or Indian while others claimed it to be North European or Germanic.
Establishing that all modern humans originated from the East African Rift and that the Neolithic agricultural revolution took place in the Fertile Crescent excludes many possible hypotheses. The next step is to establish which language and culture group was the original group in the Fertile Crescent during the Neolithic. As argued above, the proto-Kurdish, Persian, Afghan and Balochi groups gained prominence as the Aryan groups of the time. Furthermore, a better understanding of the language structure of the Hurrians —the proto-Kurds— broadened our insight of the Aryan language and cultural identity. Thus, I postulate that this is the language and culture that formed the core of the Neolithic revolution, and that this language and culture formed the center of the Aryan language and culture group. It can’ be assumed that, similar to the expansion to the south and east, there would have been an expansion to the north and west —toward Europe. This wave of expansion is estimated to have begun around 5,000 BCE and to have been completed in 4,000 BCE in Eastern Europe and around 2,000 BCE in Western Europe. This is now the main opinion and many important historians, including V. Gordon Childe, date the beginning of European history to this timeframe. Prior to this period is the period of “Old Stone Age.” It is estimated that around thirty thousand years ago Homo Sapiens became the dominant species in the region between the South of France and Spain with roots in Northern Africa. Thus, its expansion around the world was most probably during the Mesolithic period or the middle part of the stone age.
I am not about to embark on an examination of the European Neolithic and the agricultural revolution. But because of the importance of what the main source is, we need to shed some light on it. Again, I propose that the expansion to the west was not physical or colonial but cultural. However, Europe is unique in that
it had absorbed the Neolithic period with all its creative aspects. It digested an accumulation of around ten thousand years in a short period of time. Just as Western Europe has turned the modern world into a cultural expansion region over the past four hundred years, it was once the region of expansion of, initially, the Neolithic culture from the Fertile Crescent, then the Roman civilization and finally the Christian revolution. The expansive bases for all these three big revolutions in Europe were cultural more than anything else. Expansion was not based on colonization, imperialism and forced assimilation alone. It has mostly been achieved through the acceptance of the more advanced cultures as “god’s gift.” As a result, the foundation for the later “Big Revolutions” of Europe has already been laid (such as the Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Political, Industrial, and Scientific Revolutions). Europe did not have special talents with which it created these big revolutions. They resulted from the core and peripheral cultures. On the other hand, the retreat of the Ice Age brought weather conditions quite suitable for all kinds of development. The synthesis of all these conditions has paved the way for a civilization that has determined our future.
