[Ptarmigan]

I am always convinced that there was a civilization that predated Mesopotamia. It would be in present day India to Indonesia.

[muawiyah]

Advanced pictoglyphic systems were developed even earlier in Finland/Russia and Inner Mongolia.

There's gotta' be a cold, dry period sometime about 4000BC that drives these people and the reindeer and muskox herds they lived on South into Mesopotamia and the Huang Ho/Yangtse river systems where they could, in short order, expand those systems (and their accounting methods) into hieroglyphic writing.

All the rest of civilization would then arise out of the settled living and agricultural traditions of the folks from the South.

However, a civilization without some form of writing is just short of being a civilization.

Note, by hypothesizing a cold, dry period we can neatly get rid of the settled traditions in Ukraine. Those folks would have simply died out or found themselves reduced to being hunter/gatherers unable to maintain settlements.

[LiteKeeper]

I am always convinced that there was a civilization that predated Mesopotamia.

Based on what?