ABSTRACT
The geographical and climatic conditions were different in the whole of western Europe: there were no large rivers and perhaps, also, the cultural tension between adjacent ethnic groups was not so considerable as in countries with negroid neighbours. Municipal economics in ancient Europe, though somewhat of the type prevalent in early Sumerian times, took a different line of development from that followed in the East. The struggles for hegemony in Greece were never so decisive as they had been, thousands of years earlier, in Mesopotamia. The development of Roman institutions, again, assumed another form as, from the time of the emperors onwards, oriental traditions were freely utilized. Like the co-operative threshing-machine of modern times, it required the services of more draught animals and workpeople and contributed to the development of the large aristocratic farmsteads. The large plough was at the disposal of the senior of the sept, and he appears to have derived considerable privileges from this circumstance.
