The Decline and Fall of Civilisations

by Kerry Bolton

  The white race remaining white has not lost a civilization

  The white race become hybrid has not retained civilization”.45

  From such assumptions the conclusion is that whenever a non-white civilisation has arisen it can only have been from a small white culture-bearing stratum. The assumption is that since non-whites cannot create a civilisation, when a civilisation appears among non-whites they cannot have originated it. The argument is circular. Hence, for example the millennia of Chinese civilisation must have been derived from the proto-Celtic Tocharians at the Tarim Basin, the mummified remnants being of much interest to ethnologists in recent years.46

  For Cox, et al, the Chinese showed “high sustaining qualities” for civilisation, when derived from whites, and he referred to Chinese accounts of Caucasian tribes.47 However, the Chinese like most highly cultured races encountering other races for the first time, regarded the Caucasian peoples of Central Asia as hairy and “backward”, not as awe-inspiring culture-heroes. Cox wrote that the earlier epochs of Chinese civilisation were more impressive than the later because China would have had a Caucasian culture-bearing stratum that eventually succumbed to miscegenation.48 This assumption, which is also applied to Egypt, Oceania and South and Central America,49 relegates the ebbs and flows of history to a reductionism as simplistic as Marx’s historical theory of “class struggle”.

  These are assumptions that can no longer be justified by “science”, yet continue as the primary argument of the “Right”, and particularly the Anglophone Right. Hence the belief continues that whenever there are traces of blondism even among the darkest of races, there was an ancient “Nordic” presence. The blondes occasionally seen among Australoids and Melanesians were assumed to be evidence of white, blond culture-bearers sojourning into far-flung lands, and imparting whatever rudiments of culture primitive races were able to retain. However, the blondness is the result of a specifically Oceanic genetic mutation expressed as the TYRP 1 gene, that is not related to the blondism of Europeans.50 When a 9,000 year old skull was found near Washington and dubbed “Kennewick man” there was difficulty in determining the race.51 A Eurocentric assumption was widely made that Kennewick man was the remnant of a white culture-bearing stratum that had been exterminated by the Indians; for example:

  “The long-cherished victim status of Native Americans would be weakened—or worse, reversed. Suppose an archeological dig at Kennewick revealed a whole community of people with Caucasian DNA? Suppose it found dozens or hundreds of Euro-American skeletons, most with Native American arrowheads in their backs, victims of a pogrom-like massacre? If a Caucasoid Kennewick Man and his tribe roamed the Cascade rain-shadow dry interior of Washington State 9,000 years ago, we must then ask a painful question: what happened to them? Why did they vanish while Native American tribes took over the land that once was theirs? Did white-skinned early Americans lack the skill or luck to survive? Or were they killed off by darker-skinned invaders in an act we today would define as racism and genocide (especially if its victims were not of European ancestry)?”52

  So we have a circular argument in assuming that miscegenation is the primary – often the only – cause for culture decay on the basis for example that a “mulatto”, Teharka, became pharaoh of Egypt in 688B.C. From here it is assumed that this is evidence for the cause of Egyptian collapse through the influence of Black Nubia.53 We shall examine the decline of Egypt below. The image of the Nubian as coming to Egypt as a “docile, subservient workman and soldier”54 is an assumption far from correct, given the vibrancy of Nubia and its maintenance of Egyptian civilisation long after Egypt itself had decayed. However, the Nubian culture also eventually decayed. The same assumptions are made about the decay of “Aryan India” through miscegenation.55 Again, this is not borne out by genetic studies. The decay of India is much more complex than a matter of miscegenation, and will also be examined below.

  Civilisations That Died

  Mesopotamia

  The Fertile Crescent, enriched by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, was the centre of the earliest known Civilisation. Over the course of thousands of years several civilisations rose and fell in this region. The reasons for decline vary.

  The civilisation of Sumer (3000-2000 B.C.) laid the foundation for subsequent civilisations in the region. The basis of the social structure was an alliance of city states. The rivers were central to the civilisation to the extent that the priesthood helped direct the irrigation and collective agriculture, and the temples also stored crops and seeds. Agricultural organisation prompted the development of cuneiform writing to keep records and advanced mathematics, which in turn assisted with advances in engineering of the type required for the sustenance of such a civilisation, such as the building of canals, dams and walls. In particular Sumer had a commendable legal code. Many of these laws were based on restorative justice rather than on revenge. The rights of women, including slaves, and children were encoded. 56 Sumerian proverbs indicate the ethos:

  “An unjust heir who does not support a wife, who does not support a child, has no cause for celebration”. “As long as you live you should not increase evil by telling lies”. “Hand added to hand, and a man’s house is built up. Stomach added to stomach, and a man’s house is destroyed”. “He who owns many things is constantly on guard. Or: He who acquires many things, he must keep close watch over them”. “Ignoramuses are numerous in the palace”. “Strength cannot keep pace with intelligence”. “The elephant spoke to himself: ‘There is nothing like me!’ The wren answered him: ‘But I, in my own small way, was created just as you were!’” “The honest man will earn his pay”.57

  Ruins of Sumerian city-state of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia.

  The unity achieved between feuding city-states by Sargon (circa 2300 B.C.) created the Sumerian empire. However, Sargon’s successors were not equal to the task; there were rebellions against corrupt rulers. The nomadic Guti invaded and Sumer was fractured as a unified state. Ur Nammu, an official of the city-state of Ur, overthrew the Guti and re-established unity and stability. The system of weights and measures he introduced thwarted the corrupt practices of merchants that had become far-reaching. Ur Nammu, gaining the trust of the city-states, was named King of Sumer and Akkad.

  Conquest by Amorites established Babylon as the centre of a new empire. Like the Romans vis-à-vis Greek civilisation, and the Nubians vis-à-vis Egypt, the Amorites sought to continue rather than to destroy the Sumer culture. Hammurabi, circa 1750 B.C. re-established a unified imperial state. The famous legal code of Hammurabi was again one of high ethos. These Babylonians surpassed the Sumerians in science and literature, epitomised by the Epic of Gilgamesh. However, the Babylonian empire began stagnating circa 1550 B.C. After Hammurabi there was a notable decline in the arts. The distinctive cylinder-seals failed to make progress, and are part of the “general decline of power and civilisation and even the workmanship”, which became “careless”.58 As we shall consider, the decline of workmanship is a significant symptom of decay.

  The conquering Kassites did not provide an impetus for renewal. “The old ‘land’ had lost its force of reaction and recovery”.59 The impact of the Kassites is hardly discernible other than from King-lists; “they have no history”.60 The slope of decline was “uniformly long and undisturbed”, “an age sinking slowly into decline and spinning itself out only because there was no neighbour with enough force to cut even so thin a thread”, until interrupted by the sudden sacking of Babylon by the Hittites.61

  Circa 1000 B.C. the Assyrians from northern Mesopotamia, a militaristic people, conquered Babylonia. In contrast to the restorative justice of the Sumerian and Babylonian laws, the legal code of the Assyrians was based on blood retribution, mutilation and death. It is a notable feature of the difference in culture that women were treated harshly under the Assyrian laws:

  “Married women must be veiled, as must a concubine accompanying her mistress. But a harlot shall not be veiled; her head must be
uncovered, and (if not) she shall be beaten fifty stripes with rods and pitch poured over her head”.

  “Leaving aside the penalties for a man’s wife which are inscribed on the tablet, a man may flog his wife, he may pluck her hair, he may strike and damage her ears. There is no guilt involved in this”.

  “If a man divorces his wife, if it is his will he may give her something; if it is not his will, he shall not give her anything and she shall go out in her emptiness”.62

  Such was the hatred the Assyrians aroused among subject peoples that when they in turn succumbed to invasion their capital Nineveh was sacked in 621B.C. by a coalition of Babylonians, Persians, Medes, and Scythians, and obliterated without trace.

  Among the conquerors of the Assyrians circa 600B.C. were the Chaldeans. Nebuchadnezzar revived the greatness and the ethos of Babylon prior to the Assyrians. He returned to the laws and the religion of Hammurabi’s Babylon. However the later extent of decay is indicated by the last king, Belshazzar: as the Persians were advancing on Babylon he offered no defence other than to trust the walls of the city to keep the armies at bay, hoping that Persians would long be delayed by other conquests before they reached Babylon. The capital fell without resistance. The Greek historian Herodotus, who travelled to Babylon and described its splendour and customs, said of the Persian occupation:

  “Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare) long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and revelling until they learnt the capture but too certainly. Such, then, were the circumstances of the first taking of Babylon”.63

  The Ming court displayed the same moral bankruptcy in China when faced with Manchu armies. The glitter of palace opulence blinded the rulers to unpleasant realities. The Chaldeans rebelled against Persian rule; Babylon was besieged by Darius for nineteen months. Herodotus records the depravity to which the Babylonians had sunk:

  “Babylon revolted. The revolt had been long and carefully planned; indeed, preparations for withstanding a siege had been going quietly on all through the reign of the Magian [Persians] and the disturbances which followed the rising of the seven against him, and for some reason or another the secret never leaked out. When the moment finally came to declare their purpose, the Babylonians, in order to reduce the consumption of food, herded together and strangled all the women in the city each man exempting only his mother, and one other woman whom he chose out of his household to bake his bread for him”.64

  The Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian rabble had sunk into irredeemable depravity. The Mesopotamian civilisation was displaced on the world stage by Persia, followed by Alexander’s Greece. A long period of chaos followed Alexander’s death at Babylon in 323B.C. By the time Roman emperor Trajan entered Babylon in 115A.D. he found “nothing but mounds, and stones and ruins”.65

  Persia

  The Persian Empire by the time of the Greek invasion, was regarded by the Hellenes as opulent, and “feminised”. The role of the eunuchs in corruption of the empire at the royal court is reminiscent of the corruption of China’s dynasties. The deterioration of Persia had been noted after the death of Cyrus the Great, Xenophon writing in Cyropaedia “everything began to deteriorate” while Cyrus’ sons squabbled and provinces revolted.66 During the reign of Cambyses, Plato remarked, the royal heirs had “a womanish rearing by royal women lately grown rich. ...” The sons of Cyrus “were without training in their father’s craft, which was a hard one, fit to turn out shepherds of great strength, able to camp out in the open and to keep watch and, if need be, to go campaigning. He overlooked the fact that his sons were trained by women and eunuchs and that the indulgence shown them as ‘Heaven’s darlings’ had ruined their training”.67

  “So when, at the death of Cyrus, his sons took over the kingdom, over-pampered and undisciplined as they were, first, the one killed the other, through annoyance at his being put on an equality with himself, and presently, being mad with drink and debauchery, he lost his own throne at the hands of the Medes, under the man then called the Eunuch, who despised the stupidity of Cambyses”.68

  Revived by the heroism of Darius, the empire regressed to decay after his death, under the reign of Xerxes, according to Plato, who commented that Darius unlike his successor, had not been raised in luxury. “Since then there has hardly ever been a single Persian king who was really, as well as nominally, ‘Great’”. 69

  If Persia was a decaying remnant of its former glory it was also the outer enemy that served as a catalyst for the alliance of the Greek city states. In the Panegyricus (380 B.C.) Isocrates exhorted Greeks to unite and defeat Persia. Hellas regarded the Persians with contempt, looking upon them “as effeminate and unversed in war and utterly degenerate from luxurious living”.70

  Commenting on the degenerated character of the once glorious Persian army, Isocrates stated that,

  “it seems to me that in every quarter the Persians have clearly exposed their degeneracy; for along the coast of Asia they have been defeated in many battles, and when they crossed to Europe they were duly punished, either perishing miserably or saving their lives with dishonour; and to crown all, they made themselves objects of derision under the very walls of their King’s palace”.71

  Isocrates explained that this decay of the Persian ethos was part of a process of decadence that had reduced the Persians to a “mob” without fortitude:

  “And none of these things has happened by accident, but all of them have been due to natural causes; for it is not possible for people who are reared and governed as are the Persians, either to have a part in any other form of virtue or to set up on the field of battle trophies of victory over their foes. For how could either an able general or a good soldier be produced amid such ways of life as theirs? Most of their population is a mob without discipline or experience of dangers, which has lost all stamina for war and has been trained more effectively for servitude than are the slaves in our country”.72

  Recent DNA studies show that Iranians have remained mainly “western Eurasian”, “with a very limited contribution from eastern Eurasia, South Asia and Africa”.73

  Greece

  The Hellenic civilisation is often ascribed by racial theorists as being the creation of a Nordic culture-bearing stratum. The same has been said of the Latin, Egyptian, and others. This theory is illustrated by depicting sculptures of ancient Hellenes of “Nordic” appearance. Such depictions upon which to form a theory are unreliable: the ancient Hellenes were predominantly Dinaric-Alpine-Mediterranean. The skeletal remains of Greeks show that from earliest times to the present there has been remarkable uniformity,74 according to studies by Sergi,75 Ripley,76 and Buxton,77 who regarded the Greeks as an Alpine-Mediterranean mix from a “comparatively early date.” American physical anthropologist Carlton S. Coon stated that the Greeks remain an Alpine-Mediterranean mix, with a weak Nordic element, and are “remarkably similar” to their ancient ancestors.78

  American anthropologist J. Lawrence Angel, in the most complete study of Greek skeletal remains starting from the Neolithic era to the present, found that Greeks have always been marked by a sustained racial continuity.79 Angel cites American anthropologist Buxton who had studied Greek skeletal material and measured modern Greeks, especially in Cyprus. He concludes that the modern Greeks “possess physical characteristics not differing essentially from those of the former [ancient Greeks]”.80 The most extensive study of modern Greeks was conducted by anthropologist Aris N. Poulianos,81 concluding that Greeks are and have always been Mediterranean-Dinaric, with a strong Alpine presence. Angel states that “Poulianos is correct in pointing out ... that there is complete continuity genetically from ancient to modern times”.82 Nikolaos Xirotiris did not find any significant alteration of the Greek race from prehistory, through classical and medieval, to modern times.83 Anthropologist Roland Dixon studied the funeral masks of Spartans and identi
fied them as of the Alpine sub-race.84 Although race theorists often state that Hellenic civilisation was founded and maintained by invading Dorian “Nordics”, Angel states that the northern invasions were always of “Dinaroid-Alpine” type. A recent statistical comparison of ancient and modern Greek skulls found “a remarkable similarity in craniofacial morphology between modern and ancient Greeks.”85

  If miscegenation and the elimination of an assumed Nordic (Dorian) culture-bearing stratum cannot account for the decay of Hellenic civilisation, what can? The Roman historian Livy observed:

  “The Macedonians who settled in Alexandria in Egypt, or in Seleucia, or in Babylonia, or in any of their other colonies scattered over the world, have degenerated into Syrians, Parthians, or Egyptians. Whatever is planted in a foreign land, by a gradual change in its nature, degenerates into that by which it is nurtured”.86

  Here Livy is observing that occupiers among foreign peoples “go native”, as one might say. The occupiers are pulled downward, rather than elevating their subjects upward, not through genetic contact but through moral and cultural corruption. The Syrians, Parthians and Egyptians had already become historically and culturally passé, or fellaheen, as Spengler puts it. The Macedonian Greeks in those colonies succumbed to the force of etiolation. Alexander even encouraged this in an effort to meld all subjects into one Greek mass, which resulted not in a Hellenic civilisation passed along by multitudinous peoples, but in a chaotic mass from which Greece did not recover, despite the Greeks staying racially intact. The Greeks, Romans and other conquerors lost the strength of tradition to maintain themselves among alien cultures. Dr. W. W. Tarn stated of this process:

  “Greece was ready to adopt the gods of the foreigner, but the foreigner rarely reciprocated; Greek Doura (the Greek temple in Mesopotamia) freely admitted the gods of Babylon, but no Greek god entered Babylonian Uruk. Foreign gods might take Greek names; they took little else. They (the Babylonian gods) were the stronger, and the conquest of Asia (by the Greeks) was bound to fail as soon as the East had gauged its own strength and Greek weakness”.87