Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1899 — EARLY CIVILIZATION. [ARTICLE]

EARLY CIVILIZATION.

Why It Found Its Homs in the River Deltas. A solution of the problem why the earliest known civilizations—those of Babylonia, Egypt and China—should all have made their appearance in the deltas of great rivers has at last been suggested. It has been shown that clay, which for practical purposes is insoluble in water, ljjll nevertheless combine with it to a certain extent, remaining in a state of suspension known as colloidal or gelatinous. Inthis condition it has the curious property of absorbing like a sponge any crystallizable salts, as, for instance, those of nitrogen. But if into the water containing this colloidal clay a solution of common salt be poured, the clay, with the nitrogenous salts that it holds like a trap, will instantly be thrown down as a woolly precipitate. Now, this is exactly what happens with a great river like the Nile. During its periodic floods it holds in solution a large quantity of colloidal cky. This clay in its turn attracts from the air quantities of the nitrogen, which is, as Sir William Crookes has lately informed us, the life of plants. On meeting the salt water of the sea this clay, with its imprisoned nitrogen, is thrown down, and remain* behind as a delta eomposed of the ideal soil for the raisingof cereals. And that the introduction of cereals has always been the first condition of civilized life needs no demonstration. The traditions of every nation have always made their civilizer or "culture god” the person who first taught them agriculture.—Pall Mall Gazette.