Humanity might have only one origin. It might have gone also through this famous bottleneck (100.000? years) ago, that left only a few thousand of individulals. The neolithic revolution happened in several places on the earth idipendently (see Jarred). Civilization seems to have been born twice between 5000 and 3000 bc. The Egyptian civilation is impressing. Already 5000 BC kingdoms were existing in Northern and Southern Egypt. They were united in 3000 bc starting with the old kingdom. If you see there jewelry, their painting, their housing......this is not far away from what we see in Italy 3000 years later. Once in Egypt and then in China. Or is the Egyptian civilization only a part of a regional ongoing in the east mediteranean and West Asia? At least the civilization development from The Euphrat/Tigris to Athens is a continuum and Rome obviously belongs to this continuum and Western Europe is only a further displacement of the civilizatory centre. This means: There are historic roots for my thinking that the European Union should be extended to include not only Eastern Europe unti to the Russian border, the whole balkan and Turkey, but also the entire Middle East and North Africa.