Civilization
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Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. |
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The ruins of Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas," has become the most recognizable symbol of the Inca civilization. |
The word
civilization (or
civilisation) has a variety of meanings related to human
society. The word "civilization" comes from the
Latin word for townsman or citizen,
civis, and its adjectival form,
civilis. To be "civilized" essentially meant being a townsman, governed by the constitution and legal statutes of that community.
Roman civil law was gathered together into a consolidated body of the "
Corpus Juris Civilis" in the
6th Century for
Emperor Justinian (
483-
565 CE). Justinian's code was rediscovered and used by law professors at the first
University established in Western Europe, at
Bologna in the
11th century. From
1388 the word "civil" appeared in English, while "civilization" as a "law which makes a criminal process civil", appeared in
1704, closely followed in
1722 with "civilization" - meaning the opposite of "barbarity" and coming probably from the
French language.
Literal and technical definitions
By the most minimal, literal definition, a
civilization is a
complex society. Technically,
anthropologists distinguish civilizations in which many of the people live in
cities and get their food from
agriculture, from
band and
tribal societies in which people live in small settlements or nomadic groups and
subsist by foraging, hunting, or working small
horticultural gardens. When used in this sense, civilization is an exclusive term, applied to some human groups and not others.
Broader sense
In a broader sense,
civilization often can refer to any distinct society, whether complex and city dwelling, or simple and tribal. This sense is often perceived as less exclusive and ethnocentric, or alternatively less useful and meaningful, than the first. In this sense, civilization is nearly synonymous with
culture.
Human society as a whole
"Civilization" can sometimes refer to human society as a whole, as in "A nuclear war would wipe out Civilization" (see
End of civilization) or "I'm glad to be safely back in Civilization after being lost in the wilderness for weeks". Additionally, it is used in this sense to refer to the potential
global civilization.
A standard of behavior
Civilization can also mean the standard of behavior, similar to
etiquette. "Civilized" behavior is contrasted with "barbaric" or crude behavior. In this sense, civilization implies sophistication and refinement.
Superior vs. less complex societies
Another use of
civilization combines the first and fourth meanings of the word, implying that a complex society is naturally superior to less complex societies. This point of view has been used to justify
racism and
imperialism; powerful societies have often believed it was their right to "civilize," or culturally dominate, weaker ones ("
barbarians"). (The colonization or 'civilizing' of non-Western peoples was sometimes called the "
White Man's Burden" when engaged in by Modern Europeans.) Alternatively, it can be said that most people choose to live in increasingly complex societies because of increased standards of living: one of the major population shifts of the last two hundred years has been the migration of people from outlying rural and undeveloped areas to cities.
This article will mainly treat civilizations in the first, narrow, sense. See
culture,
society,
etiquette, and
ethnocentrism and for topics related to the broader senses of the term. See also
Problems with the term.
As a way of characterizing human cultures
Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and
Elman Service, an integration theorist, have produced a system of classification for all human cultures and societies based on the evolution of
social inequality and the role of the
state. This system of classification contains four categories:
*
hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally
egalitarian.
*
tribal societies in which there are some limited instances of
social rank and prestige.
*
stratified structures led by
chieftains.
*
civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.
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An Egyptian farmer using a plow drawn by domesticated animals, two developments in agriculture that started the Neolithic Revolution and led to the first civilizations. |
Literally, a civilization is a complex society, as distinguished from a simpler society. Everyone lives in a society and a culture, but not everyone lives in a civilization. Historically, civilizations have shared some or all of the following traits (some of these were suggested by
V. Gordon Childe):
* Intensive
agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power,
crop rotation, and
irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food that is not necessary for their own subsistence.
* A significant portion of the population that does not devote most of its time to producing food. This permits a
division of labor. Those who do not occupy their time in producing food may instead focus their efforts in other fields, such as
industry,
war,
science or
religion. This is possible because of the food surplus described above.
* The gathering of some of these non-food producers into permanent settlements, called
cities.
* A form of social organization. This can be a
chiefdom, in which the
chieftain of one noble family or
clan rules the people; or a
state society, in which the
ruling class is supported by a
government or
bureaucracy. Political power is concentrated in the cities.
* The institutionalized control of food by the ruling class, government or bureaucracy.
* The establishment of complex, formal social institutions such as organized
religion and
education, as opposed to the less formal traditions of other societies.
* Development of complex forms of
economic exchange. This includes the expansion of
trade and may lead to the creation of
money and
markets.
* The accumulation of more material possessions than in simpler societies.
* Development of new
technologies by people who are not busy producing food. In many early civilizations,
metallurgy was an important advancement.
* Advanced development of the
arts, including
writing.
By this definition, some societies, like
Greece, are clearly civilizations, whereas others like the
Bushmen clearly are not. However, the distinction is not always clear. In the
Pacific Northwest of the US, for example, an abundant supply of fish guaranteed that the people had a surplus of food without any agriculture. The people established permanent settlements, a social hierarchy, material wealth, and advanced artwork (most famously
totem poles), all without the development of intensive agriculture. Meanwhile, the
Pueblo culture of southwestern North America developed advanced agriculture, irrigation, and permanent, communal settlements such as
Taos. However, the Pueblo never developed any of the complex institutions associated with civilizations.
The evolution of most civilizations has been summarized as follows:# All civilizations start small, establishing their genesis with the creation of state systems for maintaining the elite.# Successful civilizations then flourish and grow, becoming larger and larger in an accelerating fashion. # They then reach a limiting maximum extent, perhaps managing to hold a degree of stability for a length of time.# Competition between states in a civilization may result in one achieving predominance over the others.# Dominance may be indirect, or may formalize into the structure of single multi-ethnic empires. # Over the long term civilizations either collapse or get replaced by a larger, more dynamic civilization.
"Civilization" can also describe the
culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of items and arts, that make it unique. Civilizations have even more intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite. Civilization is such in nature that it seeks to spread, to have more, to expand, and it has the means by which to do this.
Nevertheless, some tribes or peoples remained uncivilized even to this day (2006). These cultures are called primitive. They do not have hierarchical governments, organized religion, writing systems or money. The little hierarchy that exists, for example respect for the elderly, is mutual and not instituted by force, rather by a sort of mutual agreement. Government does not exist, or at least the civilized version of government which most of us are familiar with.
The civilized world is spread by introducing agriculture, writing and religion to primitive tribes. Some tribes may willingly adapt to civilized behavior. But civilization is also spread by force: if a tribe does not wish to use agriculture or accept a certain religion it is often forced to do so by the civilized people, and they usually succeed due to their more advanced technology. Civilization often uses religion to justify its actions, claiming for example that the uncivilized are savages, barbarians or the like, which should be subjugated by civilization.
It is difficult for the uncivilized world to mount any counter-assault on civilization since that would mean complying to civilization's standards and concepts of advanced violence (war). They would need to become civilized in order to engage in any sort of war.
Thus, the intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being
Chinese civilization and its influence on
Korea,
Japan,
Vietnam, and so forth). Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity. A female of
African descent living in the
United States has many roles that she identifies with. However, she is above all a member of "
Western civilization". In the same way, a male of
Kurdish ancestry living in
Iran is above all a member of "
Persian civilization".
Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as single units. One example is early twentieth-century philosopher
Oswald Spengler, even though he uses the German word "Kultur", "culture", for what we here call a "civilization". He said that a civilization's coherence is based around a single primary cultural symbol. Civilizations experience cycles of birth, life, decline and death, often supplanted by a new civilization with a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol.
This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian
Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume
A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of moral or religious decline, rather than economic or environmental causes.
Samuel P. Huntington similarly defines a civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species." Besides giving a definition of a civilization, Huntington has also proposed several theories about civilizations, discussed
below.
Another group of theorists, making use of
systems theory, look at civilizations as
complex systems or networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures, and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, and cultural interactions between them.
For example, urbanist
Jane Jacobs defines cities as the economic engines that work to create large networks of people. The main process that creates these city networks, she says, is "import replacement". Import replacement is the process by which peripheral cities begin to replace goods and services that were formerly imported from more advanced cities. Successful import replacement creates economic growth in these peripheral cities, and allows these cities to then export their goods to less developed cities in their own hinterlands, creating new economic networks. So Jacobs explores economic development across wide networks instead of treating each society as an isolated cultural sphere.
Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges, and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the
silk road through
Central Asia and
Indian Ocean sea routes linking the
Roman Empire,
Persia,
India, and
China, were well established 2000 years ago, when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations.
Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system," a process known as
globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration - cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic - is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the
Mesopotamian and
Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or relatively homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the
Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.
Political scientist
Samuel P. Huntington has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a
clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between
nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries.
Currently, world civilization is in a stage that has created what may be characterized as an
industrial society, superseding the
agrarian society that preceded it. Some futurists believe that civilization is undergoing another transformation, and that world society will become an
informational society.
Historian
William McGaughey, for instance, interprets world history in terms of five civilizations which have appeared in succession, each introduced by a new communication technology. Civilization itself began with writing in an ideographic form. Alphabetic writing, printing, electronic recording and broadcasting, and computer communication have introduced the remaining four civilizations, the last being in its infancy. The future of this civilization depends on organic processes similar to those in earlier ones. To a certain degree, we are able to predict the future by reviewing the course of past civilizations. Computer-based communication will shape the future of global society.
The
Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist.
(see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization)There have been many explanations put forwards for the collapse of civilization.
Edward Gibbon's massive work
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" began an interest in the Fall of Civilizations, that had begun with the
historical divisions of
Petrarch[
1] between the
Classical period of
Ancient Greece and
Rome, the succeeding
Medieval Ages, and the
Renaissance. For Gibbon:-
"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173-174.] Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the collapse of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.
Theodor Mommsen in his
"History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis", "growth", "senescence", "collapse" and "decay".
Oswald Spengler, in his
"Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations". Growing cultures he argued tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
Arnold Toynbee in his monumental
"A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of
arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a
cultural elite became a
parasitic elite, leading to the rise of
internal and
external proletariat.
Joseph Tainter in
"The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there was a
diminishing return to
complexity, in which as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD.
Jared Diamond in his recent book
"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures.
* Environmental damage, such as
deforestation and
soil erosion *
Climate change* Dependence upon
long-distance trade for needed resources
* Increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion
* Societal responses to internal and environmental problems
Peter Turchin in his
Historical Dynamics and
Andrey Korotayev et al. in their
Introduction to Social Macrodynamics. Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic
cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high
population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result during this phase the population can afford paying taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectable, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing
overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result during this phase state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, whereas state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin.
Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121â€"127).
Generally explanations for the collapse of civilization have shifted from inherent biological analogies to more systemic
ecological understandings where
sustainable cultures fail to be built.
Civilization has been criticized from a variety of viewpoints and for a variety of reasons. However, few critics have objected to
all aspects of civilization; rather, most have argued that civilization brings a mixture of good and bad effects.
The best known opponents of civilization are people who have voluntarily chosen to live outside it. These include
hermits and religious
ascetics who, in many different times and places, have attempted to eliminate the influence of civilization over their lives in order to concentrate on spiritual matters.
Monasteries represent an effort by these ascetics to create a life somewhat apart from their mainstream civilizations. In the 19th century,
Transcendentalists believed civilization was shallow and materialistic, so they wanted to build a completely agrarian society, free from the oppression of the city.
Civilizations have shown an inclination towards conquest and expansion. When civilizations were formed, more food was produced and the society's material possessions increased, but wealth also became concentrated in the hands of the powerful. The communal way of life among tribal people gave way to
aristocracy and
hierarchy. As hierarchies are able to generate sufficient resources and food surpluses capable of supplying standing
armies, civilizations were capable of conquering neighboring cultures that made their livings in different ways. In this manner, civilizations began to spread outward from
Eurasia across the world some
10,000 years ago - and are finishing the job today in the remote jungles of the
Amazon and
New Guinea.
Many
environmentalists criticize civilizations for their exploitation of the environment. Through intensive agriculture and urban growth, civilizations tend to destroy natural settings and habitats. This is sometimes referred to as "dominator culture". Proponents of this view believe that traditional societies live in greater harmony with nature than civilizations; people work with nature rather than try to subdue it. The
sustainable living movement is a push from some members of civilization to regain that harmony with nature.
Primitivism is a modern philosophy totally opposed to civilization. Primitivists accuse civilizations of restricting human potential, oppressing the weak, and damaging the environment. They wish to return to a more primitive way of life which they consider to be in the best interests of both nature and human beings. A leading proponent is
John Zerzan, whereas a critic is
Roger Sandall.
However, not all critics of past and present civilization believe that a primitive way of life is better. Some have argued that a third alternative exists, which is neither primitive nor "civilized" in the current sense of the word. This may be described as a radically different form of civilization.
Karl Marx, for instance, argued that the beginning of civilization was the beginning of
oppression and
exploitation, but also believed that these things would eventually be overcome and
communism would be established throughout the world. He envisioned communism not as a return to any sort of idyllic past, but as a quantum leap forward to a new stage of civilization.
Conflict theory in the social sciences also views present civilization as being based on the domination of some people by others, but makes no moral judgments on the issue.
Among Eastern schools of thought,
Taoism was one of the first to reject the
Confucian concern for civilization.
As discussed above, "civilization" has a number of meanings, and its use can lead to confusion and misunderstanding.
However, "civilization" can be a highly
connotative word. It might bring to mind qualities such as superiority, humaneness, and refinement. Indeed, many members of civilized societies
have seen themselves as superior to the "
barbarians" outside their civilization.
Many 19th-century
anthropologists backed a theory called
cultural evolution. They believed that people naturally progress from a simple state to a superior, civilized state.
John Wesley Powell, for example, classified all societies as Savage, Barbarian, and Civilized; the first two of his terms would shock most anthropologists today. The early 20th century saw the first cracks in this world view within
Western Civilization:
Joseph Conrad's 1902 novel "
Heart of Darkness", for example, told a story set in the
Congo Free State, in which the most savage and uncivilized behavior was initiated by a white European. This hierarchical world view was dealt further serious blows by the
atrocities of
World War I and
World War II and so on.
Today most social scientists believe at least to some extent in cultural relativism, the view that complex societies are not by nature superior, more humane, or more sophisticated than less complex or technologically advanced groups. This view has its roots in the writings of
Franz Boas.
A minority of scholars reject the relativism of Boas and mainstream social science. English biologist
John Baker, in his 1974 book
Race, gives about 20 criteria that make civilizations superior to non-civilizations. Baker tries to show a relation between the cultures of civilizations and the biological disposition of their creators.
Many
postmodernists, and a considerable proportion of the wider public, argue that the division of societies into 'civilized' and 'uncivilized' is arbitrary and meaningless. On a fundamental level, they say there is no difference between civilizations and tribal societies; that each simply does what it can with the resources it has. In this view, the concept of "civilization" has merely been the justification for
colonialism,
imperialism,
genocide, and coercive acculturation.
On the other hand, critics of this view argue that there are real differences between civilizations and tribal or hunter-gatherer societies. The modes of social organization, they say, are fundamentally altered in complex, urban societies that gather large amounts of unrelated people together into cities. Additionally, it is argued that the complex
division of labor and specialized economic activities that characterize civilizations produce better standards of living for their inhabitants.
For all of the above reasons, many scholars today avoid using the term "civilization" as a stand-alone term; they prefer to use
urban society or
intensive agricultural society, which are much less ambiguous, more neutral-sounding terms. "Civilization" however remains in common academic use when describing specific societies, such as "Mayan Civilization".
The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense) arose in
Mesopotamia between the
Tigris and
Euphrates rivers in modern-day
Iraq,
Persia in modern-day
Iran, the
Nile valley of
Egypt, the
Indus Valley region of modern-day
Pakistan and
North India, and the parallel development of
Chinese civilizations in the
Huang He (
Yellow River) and
Yangtze River valleys of
China, while smaller civilizations arose in
Elam in modern-day
Iran, and on the island of
Crete in the
Aegean Sea, as well as the
Olmec civilization in present-day Mexico. The inhabitants of these areas built cities, created writing systems, learned to make pottery and use metals, domesticated animals, and created complex social structures with class systems.
Sumer 3500â€"2334 BCE
The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer officially is believed to have begun around 4000-3500 BCE, and ended at 2334 BCE with the rise of Akkad. It was the world's first civilization. The oldest
granary yet found dates back to
9500 BCE and is located in the
Jordan Valley. The earliest known
settlement in
Jericho (
9th millennium BCE) was a
PPNA culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later, which included in one early settlement (
8th millennium BCE) mud-brick
houses surrounded by a stone wall, having a stone tower built into the wall. In this time there is evidence of domesticated
emmer wheat,
barley and
pulses and hunting of wild animals. However, there are no indications of attempts to form
communities (early civilizations) with surrounding peoples. Nevertheless, by the
6th millennium BCE we find what appears to be an ancient
shrine and
cult, which would likely indicate intercommunal
religious practices in this era. Findings include a collective
burial (with not all the skeletons completely articulated, jaws removed, faces covered with plaster,
cowries used for eyes). Other finds from this era include stone and bone tools, clay figurines and shell and malachite beads. Around
1500 to
1200 BCE Jericho and other cities of
Canaan had become
vassals of the
Egyptian empire.
Several miles southwest of
Ur,
Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of early
temple-cities, in
Sumer, southern
Mesopotamia, with the earliest of these
settlements carbon dating to around
5000 BCE. By the
4th millennium BCE, in
Nippur we find, in connection with a sort of
ziggurat and
shrine, a
conduit built of
bricks, in the form of an
arch.
Sumerian inscriptions written on
clay also appear in Nippur. By
4000 BCE an ancient
city of
Susa, in
Mesopotamia, seems to emerge from earlier
villages. Sumerian
cuneiform script dates to no later than about
3500 BCE.
Sumer, which was Mesopotamia's first civilization in what is now
Iraq, is recognized as the world's earliest civilization. Other villages begin to spring up around this time in the
Ancient Near East (
Middle East) as well.
The Egyptian civilization of the
Nile Valley began at around 3200 BCE, and ended at around 343 BCE, at the start of the
Achaemenid dynasty's control of Egypt. It is one of the three oldest civilizations in the world.
Anthropological and
archaeological evidence both indicate a
grain-
grinding culture farming along the
Nile in the
10th millennium BC using
sickle blades. But another culture of
hunters,
fishers and
gathering peoples using
stone tools replaced them. Evidence also indicates human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the
Sudan border, before
8000 BC. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around
8000 BC began to desiccate the pastoral lands of
Egypt, eventually forming the
Sahara (c.
2500 BC), and early tribes naturally migrated to the
Nile river where they developed a settled
agricultural economy and more centralized
society. Domesticated animals had already been imported from
Asia between
7500 BC and
4000 BC (see
Sahara: History, Cattle period), and there is evidence of
pastoralism and cultivation of
cereals in the East
Sahara in the
7th millennium BC. The earliest known artwork of
ships in
ancient Egypt dates to
6000 BCE.
By
6000 BC predynastic Egyptians in the southwestern corner of
Egypt were
herding cattle. Symbols on
Gerzean pottery,
c.4000 BC, resemble traditional
hieroglyph writing [
2]. In
ancient Egypt mortar (masonry) was in use by
4000 BC, and ancient Egyptians were producing
ceramic faience as early as
3500 BC. There is evidence that
ancient Egyptian explorers may have originally cleared and protected some branches of the
Silk Road.
Medical institutions are known to have been established in Egypt since as early as circa
3000 BC. Ancient Egypt gains credit for the tallest ancient
pyramids and early forms of
surgery,
mathematics, and
barge transport (see
ancient Egypt: Ancient Achievements).
The Indus Valley civilization began in the 33rd century BCE at
Harappa, followed by
Mohenjo-Daro a few centuries later. By 2800 BCE, it had developed into the largest and most advanced civilization of its time, covering almost all of
Pakistan and much of northern
India. The earliest-known
farming cultures in
South Asia emerged in the hills of
Balochistan, Pakistan, which included
Mehrgarh in
7000 BCE. These semi-nomadic peoples domesticated
wheat,
barley,
sheep,
goat and
cattle.
Pottery was in use by the
6th millennium BC. The oldest
granary yet found in
Mehrgarh in the
Indus Valley dates from
6000 BC. Their
settlement consisted of mud buildings that housed four internal subdivisions.
Burials included elaborate goods such as
baskets,
stone and bone
tools,
beads,
bangles,
pendants and occasionally
animal sacrifices.
Figurines and ornaments of
sea shell,
limestone,
turquoise,
lapis lazuli,
sandstone and polished
copper have been found. By the
4th millennium BCE much evidence of
manufacturing emerges.
Technologies included stone and copper
drills, updraft
kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting
crucibles. Button
seals included geometric designs.
By 4000 BCE, a pre-
Harappan culture emerged, with
trade networks including
lapis lazuli and other raw materials.
Villagers domesticated numerous other crops, including
peas,
sesame seed,
dates, and
cotton, plus a wide range of domestic animals, including the
water buffalo which still remains essential to intensive
agricultural production throughout
Asia today. There is also evidence of
sea-going craft. Archaeologists have discovered a massive, dredged canal and docking facility at the coastal city of
Lothal,
India, perhaps the world's oldest sea-faring harbor. Judging from the dispersal of artifacts the trade networks integrated portions of
Afghanistan, the
Persian coast, northern and central
India,
Mesopotamia (see
Meluhha) and
Ancient Egypt (see
Silk Road).
Archaeologists studying the remains of two men from
Mehrgarh,
Pakistan, discovered that these peoples in the
Indus Valley Civilization had knowledge of
medicine and
dentistry as early as circa
3300 BC. Recently there was found dentistry as early as 7000 BC ( see http://archaeology.about.com/od/inventions/qt/dentistry.htm). The
Indus Valley Civilization gains credit for the earliest known use of
decimal fractions in a uniform system of
ancient weights and measures, as well as
negative numbers (see
Timeline of mathematics). Ancient
Indus Valley artifacts include beautiful, glazed stone
faïence beads.
The
Indus Valley Civilization boasts the earliest known accounts of
urban planning. Major cities included
Lothal (2400 BCE), Harappa (3300 BCE), and Mohenjo-Daro (2500 BCE) As seen in
Harappa,
Mohenjo-daro and (recently discovered)
Rakhigarhi,
Dholavira,
India, their urban planning included the world's first urban
sanitation systems. Evidence suggests efficient municipal governments. Streets were laid out in perfect grid patterns comparable to modern
New York City. Houses were protected from noise, odors and thieves. The
sewage and
drainage systems developed and used in cities throughout the
Indus Valley were far more advanced than that of contemporary urban sites in
Mesopotamia and
Egypt and also more advanced than that of any other
Bronze Age or even
Iron Age civilization. This civilization of planned cities came to end around 1700 BC due to drying of one major & mighty river flowing from Himalayas to Arabian sea and geological / climatical changes in IVC area which made Thar desert. Due to this aridity, IVC cities were abandoned and people disintegrated and moved to more fertile Ganga - Yamuna rivers area.
Elam 3100â€"539 BCE
The Elamite Kingdom is one of the oldest civilizations on record, beginning around 2700 BCE and discovered and acknowledged very recently. This civilization was a hub of activity in the Middle East and would probably have been in contact with the civilizations of
Sumer. There is evidence of an even older civilization called the Jiroft Kingdom, but not everybody acknowledges this civilization. There are records of numerous ancient and technologically advanced civilizations on the
Iranian plateau before the arrival of
Aryan tribes from the north, many of whom are still unknown to historians today.
Archeological findings place knowledge of Persian prehistory at middle
paleolithic times (100,000 years ago).[
3] The earliest sedentary cultures date from 18,000-14,000 years ago. In
6000 BC the world saw a fairly sophisticated agricultural society and proto-urban population centers. 7000 year old
jars of
wine excavated in the
Zagros Mountains (now on display at The University of Pennsylvania) are further testament to this. Scholars and archeologists are only beginning to discover the scope of the independent, non-Semitic
Elamite Empire and
Jiroft civilizations (2) that flourished 5000 years ago.
According to ancient dialects, the Huang He was irrigated at around 2200 BCE by an emperor named Yu the Great, starting the supposed
Xia Dynasty. It is not known if this dynasty ever existed, but the earliest verifiable dynasty, the
Shang Dynasty, emerged around 1750 BCE. Developed
agriculture appears in the
7th millennium BC in the
Peiligang culture (discovered in 1977) of
Henan,
China, including storing and redistributing
crops,
millet farming and animal
husbandry (
pigs). Evidence also indicates specialized
craftsmenship and
administrators (see
History of China: Prehistoric times). This culture is one of the oldest in ancient China to show evidence of
pottery-making. China's first historical dynasty, the
Xia Dynasty, emerged in
2033 BC and may have been a late
Neolithic or early
Bronze Age culture.
Attributed to a later
Chinese culture, in the
Shang Dynasty (
1600-
1046 BC), are
bronze artifacts and
oracle bones, which were turtle shells or cattle scapula on which are written the first recorded
Chinese characters and found in the
Huang He valley,
Yinxu (a capital of the
Shang Dynasty). One of the few innovations to reach China from the outside world was the chariot, introduced at around 1300 BCE. The Shang Dynasty collapsed when western Chinese led a rebellion and started the
Zhou Dynasty, which marked the end of the original civilization.
Another source of ancient chinese civilisation is
Sanxingdui, which demonstrated astonishing bronze craftwork, but suddenly dispeared aroud
1000BC leaving no historic records.
1The first signs of civilization in
Greece was on the island of
Crete from around 2600 BCE, and by 1600 BCE, it had risen to become a larger civilization across much of Greece.
Aegean civilization is the general term for the prehistoric civilizations in
Greece, mostly throughout the
Aegean Sea. It was formerly called "Mycenaean" because its existence was first brought to popular notice by
Heinrich Schliemann's excavations at
Mycenae starting in
1876. It is more usual now to use the more general geographical title. The
Mycenaean civilization is now known to have succeeded the earlier
Minoan, flourished in the Greek island of
Crete, for which the most representative site explored up to now is
Cnossus. The site of Cnossus has yielded valuable and the most various and continuous evidence from the Neolithic age to the twilight of classical civilization. Human habitation on the site, began with the founding of the first
Neolithic settlement in
ca 7000 BC. Remains of food producing societies in Greece have also been found at the
Franchthi Cave, and a number of sites in
Thessaly, carbon-dated to
ca 6500 BC. The list of significant archeological site's include the Akrotiri at the island of
Thera. The oldest signs of human settlement in Thera are Late Neolithic (
4th millennium BC or earlier), but since
ca. 2000–
1650 BC Akrotiri developed into one of the Aegean's major
Bronze Age ports [
4], with recovered objects that had come not just from
Crete but also from Anatolia,
Cyprus,
Syria and
Egypt, from the Dodecanese islands and the
Greek mainland.
The language of the Minoans may have been written in the
Cretan hieroglyphs and the
Linear A script, but both remain undeciphered. Approximately 3,000 tablets bearing the writing have been discovered so far, many apparently being inventories of goods or resources. In the Mycenean period, Linear A was replaced by
Linear B. The later was successfully deciphered by
Michael Ventris in the 1950s, proving to be a very archaic version of the
Greek language.
Regarding
Aegean art, many items have been excavated. One Aegean sculpture (a face figure) has been greatly popularized due to its appearance in the
Athens 2004 opening ceremony. Another one was the idea behind the game's mascots. Aegean figures are intriguing, since they bear a high resemblance to modern
sculptures (e.g.
Henry Moore's works).
Olmec (New World) 1200â€"400 BCE
The Olmec civilization was the first New World civilization, beginning at around
1200 BCE and ending at around
400 BCE. By
2700 BCE, settlers in the Americas had begun to grow their first crop, maize, and a number of cities were built. Around 1200 BCE, these small cities coalesced into this civilization. A prominent civilization thus emerged. The centers of these cities were ceremonial complexes with pyramids and walled plazas. The first of these centers was at San Lorenzo, with another one following it at La Venta. Olmec artisans sculpted jade and clay figurines of Jaguars and humans, and giant heads of the emperor were standing at every major city. The domestication of maize is thought to have begun around 7,500 to 12,000 years ago (corrected for solar variations).[
5]. The earliest record of lowland maize cultivation and dates to around 5,100 calendar years BC [
6]. The ruling families, however, eventually lost their grip on the surrounding regions, and the civilization ended in
400 BCE, with the defacing and destruction of San Lorenzo and La Venta, two of the major cities. This civilization is considered the mother culture of the mesoamerican civilizations. It spawned the
Mayan civilization whose first constructions began around 600 BC and continued to influence future civilizations. [
7]
*
Dystopia*
End of civilization*
Kardashev scale*
List of pre-Columbian civilizations*
Malthusian catastrophe*
Olduvai theory *
Utopia*
"www.clashofcivilisations.com Clash of Civilisations and information on other civilisations ", Discussion and news surrounding the clash and concepts such as dialogue, equality, acceptance etc between civilisations.
*
BBC on civilization*Wiktionary:
civilization,
civilize*#
From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto. ISBN 0306803046 (1987 reprint).
*#
From the Defeat of the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Waterloo. ISBN 0306803054 (1987 reprint).
*#
From the American Civil War to the End of World War II. ISBN 0306803062 (1987 reprint).
*
Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0773463100 [
8].
