I am aware that I write as an unapologetic Eurocentric, having had a life immeasurably enriched by European culture, from Greek philosophy and plays, through the multiple achievements of the Roman republic, to the Renaissance and Enlightenment, not to mention the Middle Ages I spent many years studying.  I have travelled in Europe for fifty years – as student and bum, holiday- and film-maker – no doubt boring fellow workers, wives and children with endless visits to castles and churches, galleries and museums, visiting architecture, archaeology, arenas and atrocities. History teaches us that we are merely fleeting shadows in the march of time, and presumptions of significance are invariably overstated. History is not the inevitable upward march of progress, but is at best an intricate cycle where some things advance – technology, longevity – while others rotate – bellicosity, creativity.

The immeasurable benefit of a liberal education is that it opens your mind to this wealth. Plucked by virtue of a scholarship from the cultural sterility of a Cornish clay-mining village to a school rich in artistic and musical tradition, one of my greatest anxieties was not being able to attend every event occurring, since schedule clashes demanded choice. Now choice – be it of multi-platform entertainment or consumer goods – is enshrined as a capitalist right, over-supply undermines adventure and search engines recommend more of the same. The market, Habermas astutely observes, produces conformity. But even as tour coach tyres leave rubber on the forecourts of Europe’s cultural capitals, there are many more sites which are ignored by the hordes. I have penetrated unmanaged scrub to swim in the subterranean sulphur spring baths in Andalusia, where Caesar reputedly cured himself of liver disease. The cave on Salamis where Euripides apparently wrote his plays is also undeveloped and unvisited. Of course, Plato’s allegory presents education and learning as emergence from the dark cave in which we are born; there remains infinite illumination to be had.

 

Photograph: Svante Pääbo, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Recent discovery does, however, remind us that modern man evolved in Africa, while Europe was still inhabited by Neanderthals. A jawbone found in the Peștera cu Oase cave in south-western Romania is thought to be that of the earliest modern human skeleton identified in Europe, and has produced DNA evidence of his recent forefathers being among the first to inter-breed with Neanderthals some 40,000 years ago. So, contrary to popular assumption, Europe was late to be civilised and its genetic upgrading originated in the east of the continent. Romania could add that claim to the upgrading of its historical presentation which I have recommended it urgently needs to address.

Meanwhile, we have to resist the resurgence of the Neanderthals on the home front, as they move to ensure the legacy of a thousand-year Tory Reich. Having fostered a Scottish independence movement which makes a Labour election unlikely in the foreseeable future, they have stolen the remains of Labour’s threadbare wardrobe in the recent budget with their living wage. The Telegraph is also spearheading a campaign to get Jeremy Corbyn elected Labor leader, with the stated object of making the party permanently unelectable. When Thatcher was elected in 1979, some demoralised Labour supporters thought it might be the short, sharp shock needed to bring the party to its senses and back to power. It took 18 years. As a depressed academic colleague prophesied, we may be doomed to die under a Tory regime. At least let us still be part of Europe.