History indicates that the first civilized settlement was at Jericho, some ten thousand years ago. This area, still inside warm weather zones, was north enough to grow wheat, which the hunter gatherers learned to master and farm. And by now, they were domesticating sheep and goats, cows, finding a need for organizational order and duties clearly defined for all. Warriors would be needed to be trained first, then to learn how to apply their particular skills to those many duties needed, as people began to create in this valley a people who first settled down.



Here at Jericho the first town dwellers did thrive for thousands of years. At this point, pots, artifacts, masks and items are at that edge of no longer being tribal jewelry, but examples of a passage point in human history from hunter gatherers to town dwellers with specific skills. And so we continue, to this day. Each larger settlement becomes grander, draws more bright minds, thrives and always becomes the civilized center, while smaller settlements more on the edge of great fortune and success trade their tribal jewelry for these gleaming great works from the blacksmith in the town.

And soon Sumer and Egypt rose out of the dusty desert, both nearby precious fresh water, which made all their difference. The annual floods brought new topsoil from the mountain each spring to the soils of lower Egypt and Sumerian life. As Sumer salted up, the peoples of this old civilization found a natural oasis at Baghdad, where the otherwise far and separated Tigris and Euphrates rivers come close to each other, creating a desert oasis laden with a full water table under the soil, as with the great cities of Egypt, hugging the Nile.

And this superiority has spread out from the central point of each great civilization on earth, everywhere. Damascus is now the oldest continually inhabited city on earth, with 7,000 years under it's belt. The silk route ended here, and Chinese silk was exchanged for what China may have considered tribal jewelry from the mid east. At any rate, in Damascus are still those who specialized in creating out of raw silk woven Damask from Damascus. Many a merchant trading into the west need go no further east than Damascus, and he had found his connection to trade his European tribal jewelry for some really civilized goods. How times change. Or not.