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Civilization

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Culture and Diversity

   Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization.
   Enlarge
   Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization.
   The Parthenon in Athens is an example of classical Greek Civilization.
   Enlarge
   The Parthenon in Athens is an example of classical Greek Civilization.
   The ruins of Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas," has become the
   most recognizable symbol of the Inca civilization.
   Enlarge
   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 "civilised" 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 ( AD 483- AD 565).
   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
   “civilisation” as a “law which makes a criminal process civil,"
   appeared in 1704, closely followed in 1722 with “civilisation” -
   meaning the opposite of “ barbarity” and coming probably from the
   French language. This article follows the American usage,
   "civilization," in accordance with Noah Webster's Dictionary of 1828.

Senses of the word

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 societies, in which people live in nomadic or
   semi-nomadic groups, and tribal societies, in which people may live in
   small semi-permanent settlements. Bands usually subsist by hunting and
   gathering, and tribes often by working small horticultural gardens,
   sometimes also supplemented by hunting or fishing. Simple and more
   complex tribes are distinguished by the presence or absence of
   Chieftains, who take specialist leadership roles, unlike in bands which
   are more egalitarian, where decision making structures are less formal
   and power is more evenly shared. Civilizations are more complex again
   than chieftain societies, as, in addition to a variety of specialist
   artisans and craftspeople, civilizations are all characterised by a
   social elite, with status inherited, determined largely from birth.
   When used in this sense, civilization is an exclusive term, applied to
   some human groups and not others.

Broader sense

   The term "civilization" is used in common parlance with both a
   normative and a descriptive dimension. In the past, to be "civilized,"
   was linked to the feeling of being "civil" - a term for politeness and
   propriety. To be "uncivilized" in this usage means to be "rude," "
   barbaric" or a " savage." In this sense, civilization implies
   sophistication and refinement. People that all work in a small village
   or settlement could be civilized. This normative use has been used to
   justify many forms of imperialism, for instance in Late Victorian times
   it was specifically seen as "bringing civilization to the savages," a
   task referred to with indigenous cultures in Africa, the Pacific and
   other peoples today recognised as " Third World," as "taking up 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: since the
   beginnings of civilization there has been the migration of people from
   outlying rural and undeveloped areas to cities (See Dick Whittington
   syndrome).

   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.

   To remove these pejorative uses the meaning of civilization has been
   broadened so that "civilization" often can refer to any distinct
   society, whether complex and city dwelling, or simple and tribal (for
   example " Australian Aboriginal civilization"). This sense of the term
   is often perceived as less exclusive and ethnocentric, not making the
   distinction between civilized or barbaric, common to these meanings of
   the word. The weakness of this less ethnocentric approach is that the
   descriptive power of the word "civilization" has been significantly
   weakened. Anthropologists and archaeologists for instance argue that
   such a useage is alternatively less useful and meaningful, than the
   first. In this sense, civilization becomes nearly synonymous with
   culture.

Human society as a whole

   In this broader sense "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 global
   civilization. Such a usage is often used in the context of discussions
   about so-called " globalisation," again often used in a normative
   sense. Critics of "globalisation" reject such a coupling of the terms,
   saying that what is called "globalisation" is in fact a form of "global
   corporatisation" and that other forms of globalisation are possible,
   (for example, in respect for International Human Rights, and the Geneva
   conventions against torture of political and prisoners of war).
   Violations of such international principles today is widely considered
   "barbaric." The descriptive sense of "global civilization" would
   consider, with William McNeill's thesis of "the Rise of the West," that
   at least since the age of the great voyages of discovery of Christopher
   Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan, that the world
   comprises a single socio-economic and political system (see " World
   Systems Theory"). Recently it has been suggested that there are in fact
   three waves of the globalisation of civilization.

   The First Wave: was associated with technologies of "Wind and Water"
   energies. Leadership of this phase passed from Spain and Portugal to
   the Netherlands, and then Britain, in what Lewis Mumford calls the
   Eotechnic phase.

   The Second Wave: was associated with technologies of coal, iron and
   steel, and steam power. (See "Industrial Revolution." Lewis Mumford
   refers to this as a " Paleotechnic" phase. Leadership was contested
   between England and France in the first half of this period in the
   Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars, linked in part to the contest
   between old and new technological and social systems.

   The Third Wave: (of which we are approaching the end), is based upon
   the technologies of oil, electricity, plastics, chemicals, and the
   automobile. Mumford refers to this as the age of " Neotechnic"
   civilization. Like earlier phases, world leadership of this phase was
   contested, initially by Germany and Britain, but then by Japan (See
   "World War I" and "World War II"), the United States, and the Soviet
   Union (See "Cold War").

   In each case, the transition between one technology and the next has
   required an often revolutionary reorganization of society, and these
   revolutions have had social, economic and political dimensions as well
   as technological ones.

   It is argued that contemporary global civilization is beginning to
   undergo yet another transition, beyond the dependence on oil (See "
   Peak oil") once again towards sustainable or renewable technologies not
   dependent upon parasitic dependence upon fossil fuels. The current War
   on Terrorism in this context would seem to be a part of such a
   transitional pattern, where existing great powers first try to
   monopolise the declining stock of depleting strategic resources.

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.
     * horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two
       inherited social classes;chief and commoner.
     * highly stratified structures with several inherited social
       classes;king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
     * civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized,
       institutional governments.

What characterizes civilization

   An Egyptian farmer using a plough drawn by domesticated animals, two
   developments in agriculture that started the Neolithic Revolution and
   led to the first civilizations.
   Enlarge
   An Egyptian farmer using a plough 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 labour.
       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, especially writing.

   Epidemics among both humans and animals are also characteristics of
   civilization.

   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.

   All civilizations, as sedentary cultures have a problem in that they
   deplete important local resources in the vicinity of their first
   settlements. As a result civilizations, if they are to survive, are
   inherently expansive, as they require to draw resources essential to
   their survival from progressively further and further away from their
   core. This leads " World Systems Theorists like Immanuel Wallerstein to
   propose that civilizations can be geographically divided between are
   "core," a hinterland or "semi-periphery" and a "periphery," in which
   the core draws upon the resource base of the other two areas.

   The evolution of most civilizations has been summarized as follows:
    1. All civilizations start small, establishing their genesis with the
       creation of state systems for maintaining the elite.
    2. Successful civilizations then flourish and grow, becoming larger
       and larger in an accelerating fashion.
    3. They then reach a limiting maximum extent, perhaps managing to hold
       a degree of stability for a length of time.
    4. Competition between states in a civilization may result in one
       achieving predominance over the others.
    5. Dominance may be indirect, or may formalize into the structure of
       single multi-ethnic empires.
    6. Over the long term, civilizations either collapse or get replaced
       by a larger, more dynamic civilization.

Civilization as a cultural identity

   "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 the means by which to do this.

   Nevertheless, some tribes or peoples remained uncivilized even to this
   day (2006). These cultures are called by some " primitive," a term that
   is regarded by others as pejorative. "Primitive" implies in some way
   that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), and as all cultures are
   contemporaries today's so called primitive cultures are in no way
   antecedent to those we consider civilized. Many anthropologists use the
   term " non-literate" to describe these peoples. In the USA and Canada,
   where people of such cultures were the original inhabitants before
   being displaced by European settlers, they use the term " First
   Nations." Generally, these people 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 mutual reciprocal and customary
   agreement. A specialised monopolising government does not exist, or at
   least the civilized version of government which most of us are familiar
   with.

   The civilized world has been spread by invasion, conversion and trade,
   and by introducing agriculture, writing and religion to non-literate
   tribes. Some tribes may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour. 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, and higher population densities. Civilization
   often uses religion to justify its actions, claiming for example that
   the uncivilized are "primitive," savages, barbarians or the like, which
   should be subjugated by civilization.

   It has been 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).
   Guerilla struggles have been waged, and American Indians fought a long
   and bitter struggle against Anglo-American invaders of their lands, who
   successively violated treaties signed with them, supposedly protecting
   their territories from European invaders. In other cases they have
   needed 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), all of them
   sharing the fact that they belong to an East Asian civilization,
   sharing Confucianism, Mahayana Buddhism, a " Mandarin" class an
   educated understanding of Chinese ideograms and much else. 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
   "Islamic 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.

Civilizations as complex systems

   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 BC. 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.

The future of civilizations

   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)

The Fall of Civilizations

   See Societal collapse

   There have been many explanations put forward 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 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 J. 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 diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states
   achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they 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 to pay 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 the 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, but the
   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, and demographic and civilization collapse
   (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press,
   2003:121–127).

   Peter Heather in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History
   of Rome and the Barbarians argues that this civilization did not end
   for moral or economic reasons, but due to the fact that centuries of
   contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis
   by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The
   fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and
   re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the
   field, led to the dismemberment of Empire. Although this argument is
   specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the
   Egyptians, to the Han and Tang Empires of China, to the Muslim Abbasid
   Caliphate, and others.

   Bryan Ward Perkins in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of
   Civilization, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay the
   suffering of the collapse of a civilization shows the real horrors
   associated with it for the people who suffer its effects. The collapse
   of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the
   continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the
   Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of
   the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.

   Arthur Demarest in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest
   Civilization using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence
   from archaeology, palaeoecology, and epigraphy, argues that no one
   explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events,
   including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal
   and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan
   kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the
   collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.

   Generally, explanations for the collapse of civilization have shifted
   from inherent biological analogies to more systemic ecological
   understandings which show that sustainable cultures fail to be built.

Negative views of civilization

   Civilization has been criticized from a variety of viewpoints and for a
   variety of reasons. Some critics have objected to all aspects of
   civilization; others 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. Depletion of local resources
   also increased dependence upon more distant resources so compelling
   expansion, by either invasion or trade with neighbouring peoples. 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 neighbouring 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
   judgements on the issue.

   Among Eastern schools of thought, Taoism was one of the first to reject
   the Confucian concern for civilization.

   Given the current problems with the sustainability of industrial
   civilization, some, like Derrick Jensen, who posits civilization to be
   inherently unsustainable, argue that we need to move towards a social
   form of "post-civilization" as different from civilization as the
   latter was with pre-civilized peoples.

Problems with the term "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 behaviour 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."

Early civilizations

   The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense)
   developed from proto-civilized cultures in Mesopotamia between the
   Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq, Persia in modern-day
   Iran, the Indus Valley region of modern-day Pakistan and North India,
   the Nile valley of Egypt, and the parallel development of Chinese
   civilizations in the Huang He River (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 and the Caral civilization in modern day
   Mexico and Peru. 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.
   Proto-civilized cultures developed as a late stage of the Neolithic
   Revolution, and pioneered many of the features later associated with
   civilizations. The oldest granary yet found, for instance, dates back
   to 9500 BC and is located in the Jordan Valley. The earliest known
   settlement in Jericho ( 9th millennium BC) was a Pre-Pottery Neolithic
   A culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later,
   which included in one early settlement ( 8th millennium BC) 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 BC 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. Despite considerable urban
   development in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages, these sites only
   became part of the fully civilized world around 1500 to 1200 BC when
   the pre-literate sites of Jericho and other cities of Canaan had become
   vassals of the Egyptian empire.

   It is also important to note various literate and pre-literate
   civilizations developed in southern Sudan and East African regions
   prior to European contact (eg. See Ghana Empire, Mali Empire, Songhai
   Empire, Great Zimbabwe, Munhumutapa Empire).

Sumer 3500–2334 BC

   The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer officially is believed to have
   begun around 4000-3500 BC, and although some claim it ended at 2334 BC
   with the rise of Akkad, the following Ur III period saw a Sumerian
   renaissance. This period came to an end with Amorite and Elamite
   invasions, after which Sumerian retained its importance only as a
   written language (similar to Latin in the Middle Ages). It is generally
   recognised that Sumer was the world's first civilization.

   Eridu was the oldest Sumerian site, settled during the proto-civilized
   Ubaid period. Situated 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 BC. By the 4th millennium BC, 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 BC an ancient Elamite city of Susa, in
   Mesopotamia, also seems to emerge from earlier villages. Whilst Elam
   originally adopted their own script from an early age they adopted the
   Sumerian cuneiform script to their own language. The earliest
   recognisable cunieform dates to no later than about 3500 BC. 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, were greatly impacted and shifted rapidly from a proto-civilized
   to afully civilized state (eg. Ebla, Mari amd Asshur).

Ancient Egypt 3200–343 BC

   The Egyptian civilization of the Nile Valley began at around 3200 BC,
   and ended at around 343 BC, 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 that
   the Kubbaniya culture was a grain- grinding culture farming along the
   Nile before 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, and, in 2500 BC, 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 BC.

   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 . 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.

Indian subcontinent 3300–1700 BC

   Marine scientists in India have discovered an archaeological site off
   India's western coast as old as 7000 BC. The revelation comes after
   images from the sea-bed suggested the presence of built-up structures
   resembling the Harappan civilization.

   Another civilization of the Indian subcontinent, the Indus valley
   civilization traces it's origins to Mehrgarh Period I (7000 BC-3500
   BC). By 2800 BC, it had developed into one of the largest and most
   advanced civilization of that time, covering almost all of modern day
   Pakistan and much of northern India. The earliest-known farming
   cultures in South Asia emerged in the hills of Balochistan, Pakistan.
   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 BC 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 BC, 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 harbour. 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).

   Scientists studying the remains of human beings from Mehrgarh,
   Pakistan, discovered that the people of the Indus valley civilization
   had knowledge of medicine and dentistry as early as 7000 BC. The Indus
   valley civilization is credited for a regular and consistent 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 is known to have very early accounts of
   urban planning. Major cities included Lothal (2400 BC), Harappa (3300
   BC), and Mohenjo-Daro (2500 BC), Rakhigarhi and Dholavira. Urban
   planning in these cities included the world's first urban sanitation
   systems. Evidence suggests efficient municipal governments. Streets
   were laid out in grid patterns. The sewage and drainage systems
   developed and used in cities throughout the Indus Valley were 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 rivers flowing from the Himalayas to
   the Arabian sea and geological/climatical changes in the Indus valley
   civilization area which resulted in the formation of the Thar desert.
   Due to this aridity, the cities were abandoned and people disintegrated
   and moved to more fertile Ganga-Yamuna rivers area.

Elam 3100–539 BC

   The Elamite Kingdom is one of the oldest civilizations on record,
   beginning around 2700 BC 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 palaeolithic times
   (100,000 years ago). 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 centres.
   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 archaeologists are only beginning to discover the
   scope of the independent, non-Semitic Elamite Empire and Jiroft
   civilizations (2) that flourished 5000 years ago.

Caral ( New World) 3000-1600 BC

   Caral, the oldest known urban settlement in the Western Hemisphere.
   Enlarge
   Caral, the oldest known urban settlement in the Western Hemisphere.

   The oldest known civilization in South America, as well as in the
   Western Hemisphere as a whole, the Caral Supe valley was the site of
   several interconnected settlements leading to the Peruvian coast,
   centred around the urban centre at Caral. Caral is the largest recorded
   urban site in the Andean region, and the presence of a Quipu (Andean
   recording medium) indicates its potential influence on later Andean
   societies (as well as the antiquity of this unique recording system).
   The stone pyramids on the site are thought to be contemporary to the
   great pyramids of Giza. Unusually among Andean cities, no evidence of
   fortifications, or of other signs of warfare, have yet been found at
   the site.

China (Yellow River) 2200–214 BC

   The Great Wall of China
   Enlarge
   The Great Wall of China

   China is one of the world's oldest civilizations on record. According
   to ancient dialects, the Yellow River was irrigated at around 2200 BC
   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 BC. 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 artefacts 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 civilization is Sanxingdui, which
   demonstrated astonishing bronze craftwork, but suddenly disappeared
   around 1000BC leaving no historic records. 1

Mycenaean Greece 2000–1450 BC

   The first signs of civilization in Greece was on the island of Crete
   from around 2600 BC, and by 1600 BC, 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 archaeological sites 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 , 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 latter 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) 1200–400 BC

   The Olmec civilization was the first Mesoamerican civilization,
   beginning at around 1200 BC and ending at around 400 BC. By 2700 BC,
   settlers in the Americas had begun to grow their first crop, maize, and
   a number of cities were built. Around 1200 BC, these small cities
   coalesced into this civilization. A prominent civilization thus
   emerged. The centres of these cities were ceremonial complexes with
   pyramids and walled plazas. The first of these centres 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). . The earliest record of lowland
   maize cultivation and dates to around 5,100 calendar years BC . The
   ruling families, however, eventually lost their grip on the surrounding
   regions, and the civilization ended in 400 BC, 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.

Ancient Rome 900BC-500AD

   The Roman Forum was the central area around which ancient Rome
   developed.
   Enlarge
   The Roman Forum was the central area around which ancient Rome
   developed.

   Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on
   the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to an empire straddling
   the Mediterranean. In its twelve-century existence, the Roman
   civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an
   empire. It came to dominate Western Europe and the entire area
   surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest and assimilation.
   Nonetheless, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the
   Roman Empire. The western half of the empire, including Hispania, Gaul,
   and Italy, eventually broke into independent kingdoms in the 5th
   century; the eastern empire, governed from Constantinople, is usually
   referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date for
   the "fall of Rome" and for the subsequent onset of the Early Middle
   Ages, also known as the Dark Ages.

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