Why this, why then? The questions regarding the start of advanced culture have to be asked. Natural culture is to be directed by instincts evolved in a world where all wealth comes from nature and man is amethodical. For us to have ever moved beyond this the potential had to always be there due to agency, a condition necessary for the political maneuvering of natural man. Any primitive man could then use this agency to move beyond the natural system in the two most important ways, The Fundamental Act of Human Intelligence(using regard to choose between methods not people) and the The Fundamental Moral Choice(between self interest and universal moral concern). Any primitive man could choose to advance due to the existence of agency and yet all men, primitive or advanced, have the same instincts pulling them towards the natural system. So there is always the possibility of advancement and this advancement is counter instinctive to all and must survive the opposing current of instinct to survive and spread beyond the individual. So widespread cultural advancement would need an environment suitable for this.
Due to agency it can be assumed that individuals choosing advancement occurs throughout history at a steady rate. This rate is so low these individuals are always in the minority and their percentage would have been constant through most of prehistory, constantly at the spawn rate. Even if they communicated their influence to others there would be dilution and even opposition. If the current of natural living was not stronger than the influence of the individual examples randomly spawning then advancement would have started as soon as the species started and this did not happen. The most recent estimate for the start of the species would be 80,000 years ago and the majority of the time since then was spent living at a constant state of primitiveness roughly equal to that of the Neanderthals. Human civilization did not start to advance with any speed at all until roughly 10,000 years ago. A special circumstance was needed to make the individual moves in the direction of civilization into group wide cultural movement.
The special circumstance was the extinction of the megafauna in the northern half of Eurasia after the invention of sewing. This invention is the most overlooked of all human inventions and the single most overlooked fact of prehistory. Before sewing humans could not live north of a certain line, the cold was too much. Homo Erectus never went north of this line and the animals of the north half of Eurasia never saw a single Homo Erectus. Because of this they never adapted to hunting pressure and the megafauna were quickly hunted to extinction wherever modern man went that Homo Erectus had not gone first. The western hemisphere, Australia, Oceania east of the Wallace Line and the northern half of Eurasia, the megafauna were hunted to extinction in all of these locations when modern man arrived. In the places where Homo Erectus had gone first the megafauna survived as they adapted to hunting pressure while exposed to Homo Erectus. So India kept its elephants but Siberia and America did not. Java kept its megafauna but Australia did not. Wherever modern man went that Homo Erectus had not the animals were unprepared for the hunting pressure and Homo Erectus was naked.
Around 25,000 years ago modern man invented sewing and went further north than Homo Erectus had ever gone and quickly exterminated the megafauna, the traditional prey of humans. This created the special environment for advanced culture to succeed. The most important region for pre history is grasslands surrounding the Black Sea, the primary area of pre historic animal domestication worldwide. Once the megafauna were extinct large grasslands existed with no suitable prey for hunting and no plant sources of sustenance to keep a human population alive. Grasses are the second most water efficient plants behind only true desert plants and they dominate arid regions. The grasslands were too dry to support much plant life besides grass and this plant food is useless to man. Once the prey animals had been hunted to extinction the lands would have been empty of human food and thus of humans.
The first farm animal created by man was the goat. Either this or the dog was the first animal domesticated. Goats live in mountains and are slow runners and built for rock climbing and jumping not running or for living in grasslands. This slow running animal was the first animal food source domesticated and most likely the first domesticated food source of any type. Goats captured from mountains were brought to the empty plains, their were no wild goats to breed with and they could not survive predators without human help. Goats are slow running and not built for plains and would not have been hard to keep track of. Any goat which wandered away from the shepherd would die from predators as goats are incompetent at life in the plains. So the goats most likely to stay with the shepherd were the ones most likely to survive. Having brought goats to the plains the goats would have been domesticated by the selective pressure of the situation. Man now had a food source in the empty steppeland surrounding the Black Sea. Man’s only food source in the empty steppeland surrounding the Black Sea.
Goats live in the highest mountains. Sheep live further down in altitude, in the hills. Goats are purely a mountain species, they have small hooves so they can stand on the narrowest of mountain ledges. They can jump great distances across the rocky terrain of the mountain tops but they are hopelessly slow runners on flat ground. If they stray from the shepherd they are food for the wolf. The only goats which survived in the steppe were the tamest goats and this pressure would have quickly altered their behavior and made them farm animals. But this new food source would have tamed the shepherd. Having exterminated all the suitable game animals in an environment with no adequate plant food the shepherd who did not tend his flock would starve. This was the environment which tamed man.
This was the start of civilized life. Man has agency and there would have always been individuals who chose to use regard to choose between methods not people. There would have always been individuals who chose universal moral concern over self interest. And the influence of these individuals would have been drowned out by the influence of the majority, of the natural system. But now was a change, the only groups which could survive on the steppeland surrounding the Black Sea were the groups that embraced cultural advancement. To move beyond the natural system was all that would allow the adequate tending of the goats, as only the good shepherd could survive in the steppeland. And to those of good mind the steppeland would have been a paradise.
Everyone dreams of a little world all their own. This is why people love boats, it is the closest you can come to owning an island which is what people really want. Because it is human nature to want a little world all your own. And to those early shepherds the steppeland was just that. No one else had domesticated goats. The endless grassland was empty of all men but the good shepherds. The goats would produce more than enough food, you had safety from the isolation and you had all the food you needed. As long as you took care of the goats. Any backsliding into the natural system and you would have to leave the steppe and look for natural food. But be the good shepherd and you would never starve. This steppeland was the special situation that allowed human advancement to move beyond a few random individuals making purely personal advancement. Now you had groups advancing and building cultures around this advancement. Eventually some of them developed cultures which promoted advancement beyond the natural system so well they could leave the steppe and not slide backward into the natural system. And so the Black Sea area became the start of civilization.
It is likely that something similar happened in Tibet or the regions local to it. Archeology is a western invention and the west has had limited access to the east Asian areas needed for study. Under Communist rule they were entirely barred from entry. But around the same time that civilization was starting in the west it was starting in the east. All the major rivers of Asia originate in Tibet, the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Indus, Ganges, Irrawaddy, all start in Tibet. And East Asian civilization all started in these river valleys at roughly the same time, yet decayed and died out afterwards except for the Yellow River, which runs through desert regions. The river-in-a-desert theme dominates near pre history, the Nile, the Indus, the Yellow. I believe Tibet played the role of the Black Sea steppeland for Asia and after sewing modern man exterminated the megafauna and then domesticated animals in response and then advanced culture spread down all the river valleys of Asia. This influence best survived where it was most isolated, in the Yellow and Indus rivers running through deserts. No other explanation for the start of Asian civilization best explains the known facts, if the Communist had not barred the archeologists for so long I believe this question would already be answered. With enough time the facts will come out, but only one answer can logically fit with human nature and simple logic.
The spread of advanced culture from the Black Sea area is much better understood than the Asian situation. 8,000 years ago the sea level was rising due to glacier melt from the end of the Ice Age. The sea levels crested the land barrier and entered the Black Sea. As water rushed in it eroded the earth underneath and the channel deepened and the rate of entry increased. The Black Sea was quickly flooded leading to massive migration out of the area. This Black Sea flood is attested to in the Bible, and the stories of Zoroastrianism. The story of Atlantis told to Solon in Egypt was most likely about the Black Sea migrations as it describes the movement of the Atlanteans as being from east to west and places it at the time of the Black Sea flood. This would mean that the Pillars of Hercules spoken of in the account would be the Dardanelles Straight and not Gibraltar. Driven out of their place of origin by the sea the Black Sea peoples spread to all of the classical world. They brought the first farming to Europe and within 500 years of the Black Sea flood they had occupied all the prime farmland in all of Europe. They were concentrated in Greece and Italy, the pillars of the classical world. DNA testing shows that 90% of Greeks are descended from the people fleeing the Black Sea flood and 60% of Italians, these are the two highest figures in Europe. It was the people from the Black Sea that started western civilization and they moved the center of civilized westward in response to the Black Sea flood.
The standard explanation for the northward bias in civilization is the need to store food over the winter making forethought and planning necessary for survival. There was no northward bias in the western hemisphere or any that can’t be explained solely by culture except for the very start of advanced culture. This first start had to come from the north because the extinction of the Eurasian megafauna created the environment where the ever present individual choices to advance beyond natural living had the chance to become a group ethic and way of life. It is possible that without this specific environment we would have remained primitive forever. The advanced cultures that started north of the line Homo Erectus never crossed spread southward and so far the spread has been uneven and so success has been uneven. Eventually what makes cultures advanced will be distilled down to the essence of the Fundamental Act of Human Intelligence and the Fundamental Moral Choice. These two principles will become widely known and understood and then all cultures will have equal access to that which makes us successful. But it all started at the Black Sea and the Tibetan Plateau. It had to as man always has the potential for advancement due to agency, but this advancement must always fight against the current of our natural state, our instincts which evolved in a world where all wealth comes from nature and man is amethodical.