Everyone could claim African ancestry given that civilisation is deemed to have started there.
"Civilisation has given us an extra 20-30 years of life.
"Civilisations have collapsed before: the question is whether we can avoid the first time [an] entire global civilisation has given us the opportunity of having the whole mess collapse".
Just as millions of years of evolution have had a minimal effect on our primitive instincts, give a laddie civilisation, education, emigration and integration and he's still a tartan troglodyte.
The opening scenes introducing the central character Snowman, a lonely figure isolated on the sandy and possibly toxic shores of human civilisation, gave a very different edge to the packed Barceloneta beach under my feet.
For security reasons Mr Rawles refuses to be interviewed face to face, but he is friendly and articulate on the telephone.And I learned how to get alongThe reasons survivalists give for thinking civilisation might be about to end have changed over time.
But there have been political winners the Danish People's Party, an anti-immigration movement, and its leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, the doyenne of Danish nationalism.The sound of civilisations clashing has given a boost to this xenophobic movement.
Central to Ms Freedman's approach is her emphasis on the relationship between the value of women's labour and their power in any given society.Ranging from ancient civilisations to the present day, from China to Peru, the scope of this book is enormous.
For Freud, civilisation is never a given but involves an active endeavour to keep Eros and Thanatos synthesised rather than split apart.
Under Muhammad Khatami's presidency, Khomeini's dream of "exporting the revolution" has given way to a "dialogue of civilisations".
