Where civilization starts

Margaret Mead, 1901-1978. Probably the most famous anthropologist of the 20th century.

Margaret Mead’s dad was a finance professor at Wharton. Like him, she entered academia.

But she didn’t study finance.

Margaret’s thing was anthropology. Humans and the cultures we create.

Over a career that spanned the 50s, 60s, and 70s, she became one of the most famous American academics of the 20th century. She studied cultures in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, and she taught at The New School, Columbia, Fordham, and the University of Rhode Island.

Mead won a Kalinga Prize for explaining science to lay people. And Jimmy Carter gave her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

She’s in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY.

And as a side project toward the end of her life, Mead even helped draft the American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.

A student once asked Professor Mead what she considered to be the first sign of human civilization.

She didn’t talk about cuneiform script, art, or agriculture.

Mead said the first sign of civilization was a healed femur. Skeletal remains showing an ancient human broke their leg. And then healed.

Mead explained that animal bones don’t heal. When animals break a leg, they die. They can’t run from danger. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

A human can’t survive a broken leg either. Unless another human invests in them. Stays with them. Binds their wounds. Carries them to safety and nurses them to recovery.

Professor Mead told her student:

“Helping someone through difficulty is where civilization starts.”

If we’re going to build the kind of world where we can flourish. And reach the stage of social and cultural development that is most advanced. We can’t do it alone. 

We must invest in others. Bind their wounds. Carry them to safety. 

Family. Friends. Neighbors. 

That’s how we’ll thrive. That’s how we’ll advance. 

That’s where civilization starts.