Turning Disadvantages into Advantages—How did the Silk Road come into being? (1) Interaction of other civilization centers and the relative independence of ancient Chinese civilization Other centers of civilization outside of China. The most important origins of early human civilizations in the Old World in ancient times were not widely dispersed, but concentrated in a few places in the Old World (ie, Eurasia and Africa). From 10,000 BC to the 8th millennium BC, the dawn of human civilization has appeared in the Levant, the Anatolian Plateau and the east coast of the Mediterranean in the Middle and Near East.