Even after civilization and culture had achieved a relatively high
position, they were still purely local, and from this fact subject to
violent shocks. Modern research has shown the existence in prehistoric
or, at least, protohistoric times of many peoples who, in given
localities, achieved a high and peculiar culture, a culture that was
later so completely destroyed that it is difficult to say what, if
any, traces it left on the subsequent cultures out of which we have
developed our own; while it is also difficult to say exactly how much
any one of these cultures influenced any other. In many cases, as
where invaders with weapons of bronze or iron conquered the neolithic
peoples, the higher civilization completely destroyed the lower
civilization, or barbarism, with which it came in contact. In other
cases, while superiority in culture gave its possessors at the
beginning a marked military and governmental superiority over the
neighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it a
certain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk at
the mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savage
souls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people that
had been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling waves
of barbarism wash over them.
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