She opened our eyes to the way that civilizations unfold and develop. Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead became the talk of society with her study, Coming of Age in Samoa. For decades she toured the world, explaining what she had observed as children were born, how they were raised, what families and groups did to reinforce certain behaviors, what happened to non-conformists, what marriage looked like, and how people aged and died.

When Ms. Mead was speaking at a university, one student asked her what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in any given culture. This was a good question, with a number of different possible responses. Was cultivation of nutritious plants the first sign of civilization? How about the domestication of some species of animals? Maybe it was the cr…