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No worries, I knew you weren't endorsing Childe. Just my way of acknowledging that he was an influence on Toynbee. I ran into "A Study of History" early in life and it was an amazing read (what of it I could follow anyway). Much of the details have been contradicted by subsequent scholarship but his challenge/response thesis is still valid IMO. Wonder what Toynbee would have made of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"?

BTW I've dug out my old text on the predynastic period and it does mention Childe in a couple of places.

No problem, just wanted to clarify my own post. I agree Toynbee has some valid ideas even if on some details he's been superseded by subsequent scholarship. I imagine he'd agree with Huntington's gist, though perhaps he'd broaden Huntington's analysis beyond the Christendom/Islamic conflict to wider considerations of conflicts between Christendom and other elements in the contemporary social/cultural order. Thanks for looking up the info on Childe. I should dig and see if I can find some more on the history of the theory we were discussing--I find it enlightening to study the "history of history" and see where some of these historical theories came from and what assumptions undergirded them, which is one reason I like reading older historians like Toynbee and Childe.