One of the fundamental questions asked by archaeology is when and where did civilisation begin? In the 19th century, most Europeans and north Americans believed the Bible story that Ancient Egypt had been the first great civilisation. It seemed obvious that civilisation had begun in the Middle East and then spread out across the world – this view was called 'diffusionism'. But excavations in Central and South America, particularly in Mexico, raised questions about the age of the earliest civilisations, and challenged the idea that Ancient Egypt influenced ancient peoples all around the world. In the 1960s, archaeology proved once and for all that civilisation in Mexico developed quite successfully on its own, without the aid of foreign intervention. Now archaeologists believe that there was never a single beginning to civilisation, but that human culture developed simultaneously all over the world. The following sections show how Eurocentric ideas of cultural diffusionism were successfully refuted by archaeologists.
	1839 CATHERWOOD and STEPHENS and PALENQUE A Londoner, Frederick Catherwood, and a New Yorker, John Lloyd Stephens, find the 'lost city' of Palenque, in the Chiapas region of Mexico. At first, Stephens plans to plunder the site, which was built by the ancient Mayan civilisation, and ship the booty to New York. But instead both men fall in love with the place and, despite illness, make scientific measurements and drawings of the Mayan buildings. Catherwood and Stephens return to the area on other expeditions and eventually find a hundred Mayan sites and 15 lost cities, and publish many books – such as Stephens' Incidents of Travel in Central America – that publicise the wonders of Mayan culture. At first, Catherwood, who'd once excavated in Egypt, thinks that Ancient Egyptians came to Mexico and built the Mayan pyramids. Later he changes his mind. In the 1850s, Edward Burnett Tylor, an English anthropologist, sets out his theory that all humans have one origin, that civilisation started in the Middle East and spread all over the world. He calls his theory diffusionism and his ideas dominate archaeology for 50 years.
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	1869 OPPERT and NINEVEH In a Berlin library, a German scholar, Jules Oppert, translates the ancient texts that he has discovered while excavating the biblical city of Nineveh in Iraq. This Assyrian civilisation, a warlike culture which was based in Mesopotamia, has not left any large pyramids, but its ruins are full of libraries containing clay tablets written in cuneiform, a form of ancient writing done in wedge-shaped strokes. Oppert translates many of these tablets and discovers references to the ancestors of the Assyrians. Realising that these ancestors are an even older civilisation, Oppert names them 'Sumerians'. His work leads field archaeologists in Iraq to discover traces of Sumerian artefacts and speculate that it was Sumer and not Egypt that was the legendary one true beginning of world civilisation.
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	1894 PETRIE and NAQADA The British archaeologist Flinders Petrie excavates an ancient cemetery at Naqada in southern Egypt. He finds about 3,000 graves and builds up a huge collection of artefacts, mainly thousands of pots, which he then dates and classifies. Just as 19th-century Egypt had been invaded by the British, Petrie assumed that the ancient tribes of Egypt had been conquered by more technologically advanced foreigners from across the Red Sea. He suggests that the cemetery at Naqada holds the graves of the invading ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, perhaps even Sumerians.
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	1940s FRANKFORT and CHICAGO One of the archaeologists trained by Flinders Petrie, an Anglo-Dutchman called Henri Frankfort, teaches at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, in the United States. By studying the culture of the Ancient Egyptians and the culture of the Ancient Sumerians, he realises that their views of the world were completely different. From this, he deduces that the diffusionist theory that the Sumerians invaded Egypt and imposed their culture on the Ancient Egyptians is wrong. If this had been the case, then surely the two cultures would have been similar. Instead, he argues that civilisation probably started in different places and developed without outside influences.
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	1952 RUZ LHUILLIER and PALENQUE A Mexican archaeologist, Alberto Ruz Lhuillier finds the burial chamber of King Pacal, the most powerful ruler of Palenque. During the excavation, he also finds amounts of treasure whose richness and age rival that of Egypt. Studying the ruins of the so-called Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, the largest building in the city, Ruz Lhuillier not only uncovers much information about the ancient Mayan view of the world, but also realises that this is the only Mexican pyramid that was built as a royal tomb. All the other Mayan pyramids were temples, but none was built to hold the dead. This is yet more evidence that the Mayan civilisation was not copied from that of Ancient Egypt.
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	1966-81 FLANNERY and OAXACA In a project lasting 15 years, Professor Kent Flannery of Michigan University excavates sites all over the Oaxaca valley in southwestern Mexico, which has been inhabited for more than 10,000 years. As well as early cave dwellings, his team discovers the foundations of an ancient village house in San Jose Magote, which after being carbon dated to 1300BC, turns out to be the oldest house in Central America. At Monte Alban, Flannery and his team find vast ruins which they name the Empire of the Zapotecs. By comparing the remains of the daily living arrangements of the oldest Mexican cave dwellers with those of the villagers, and then with those of the city civilisation, they find evidence of continuity from one age to the next. Over thousands of years, the patterns of everyday life – such as the way rooms were organised and crops grown – have stayed the same. Because of this evidence of unbroken development, Flannery realises that this civilisation is completely different to that of Ancient Egypt and that diffusionist ideas are wrong. The ancient Mexicans didn't need outside inspiration – they created their own civilisation by themselves.
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