Civilization
Definition
A civilization or civilisation has a variety of meanings related to human society. The term comes from the Latin word civis, meaning "citizen" or "townsman." By the most minimal, literal definition, a "civilization" is a complex society.
anthropologists distinguish civilizations in which many of the people live in cities (and obtain their food from agriculture), from 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.
"Civilization" can also mean a standard of behavior, similar to etiquette. Here, "civilized" behavior is contrasted with crude or "barbaric" behavior. In this sense, civilization implies sophistication and refinement.
Another use of the term "civilization" combines the meanings of complexity and sophistication, implying that a complex, sophisticated society is naturally superior to less complex, less sophisticated 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"). This act of civilizing weaker peoples has been called the "White Man's Burden".
In a broader sense, "civilization" often refers to any distinct society, whether complex and city-dwelling, or simple and tribal. This usage is less exclusive and ethnocentric than the previous definitions, and is almost synonymous with culture. Thus, the term "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 more intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite.
Samuel P. Huntington, in his essay The Clash of Civilizations, defined 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." In this sense, a Christian woman of African-American descent, living in the United States of America, has many roles that she identifies with, but she is, above all, a member of "Western civilization".
Finally, "civilization" can refer to human society as a whole, as in the sentence "A nuclear war would wipe out civilization," or "I'm glad to be safely back in civilization after being lost in the wilderness for 3 weeks." It is also used in this sense to refer to a potential global civilization.
Problems with the term "civilization"
As discussed above, "civilization" has a variety of meanings, and its use can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. Moreover, the term carried a number of value-laden connotations. 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.
For these reasons, many scholars today avoid using the term "civilization" as a stand-alone term, preferring to use urban society or intensive agricultural society, which are less ambiguous, and more neutral terms. "Civilization," however, remains in common academic use when describing specific societies, such as, for example, "Mayan Civilization."
What characterizes civilization
Historically, civilizations have shared some or all of the following traits:
- Intensive agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power, crop rotation, and irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food beyond what is 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 obtain their food through trade as in modern capitalism or may have the food provided to them by the state as in Ancient_Egypt. This is possible because of the food surplus described above.
- The gathering of these non-food producers into permanent settlements, called cities.
- A social hierarchy. 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.
Based on these criteria, some societies, like that of Ancient Greece, are clearly civilizations, whereas others, like the Bushmen, are not. However, the distinction is not always so clear. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, 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 art (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 Pueblo. However, the Pueblo never developed any of the complex institutions associated with civilizations. Today, many tribal societies live inside states and under their laws. The political structures of civilization were superimposed on their way of life, and so they occupy a middle ground between tribal and civilized.
Early civilizations
The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense) arose in the Nile valley of Egypt, on the island of Crete in the Aegean Seain, around Euphrates and Tigris rivers of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley region of modern Pakistan, in the Huang He valley (Yellow River) of China, , and on the islands of Japan. 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. Early settlements were built mostly in river valleys where the land was fertile and suitable for agriculture. Easy access to a river or a sea was important not only for food (fishing) or irrigation, but also for transportation and trade. In their size and complexity, first civilizations in South Asia and China match the earliest civilizations that arose in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Here is a short description of some early civilizations (for more about early civilizations see http://history-world.org)
Ancient Egypt
Both anthropological and archaeological evidence indicate a grain-grinding and farming culture along the Nile in the 10th millennium B.C.E. Evidence also indicates human habitation in the southwestern corner of Egypt, near the Sudan border, before 8000 B.C.E. Climate changes and/or overgrazing around 8000 B.C.E. began to desiccate the pastoral lands of Ancient Egypt, eventually forming the Sahara (c.2500 B.C.E.), 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 B.C.E. and 4000 B.C.E. There is evidence of pastoralism and cultivation of cereals in the East Sahara in the 7th millennium B.C.E. The earliest known artwork of ships in Ancient Egypt dates to 6000 B.C.E.
By 6000 B.C.E. Pre-dynastic Egypt (in the southwestern corner of Egypt) was herding cattle and constructing large buildings. Symbols on Gerzean pottery (c. 4000 B.C.E.) resemble traditional Egyptian hieroglyph writing. In Ancient Egypt mortar (masonry) was in use by 4000 B.C.E., and ancient Egyptians were producing ceramic faience as early as 3500 B.C.E. 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 B.C.E. Ancient Egypt also gains credit for the tallest ancient pyramids and early forms of surgery, and barge transport.
By the 6th millennium B.C.E. organized and permanent settlements in regions of Africa were producing artifacts of metal to replace prior ones made of stone. Jewelry and tableware (made of ivory or bone) also appear in this era. Recent archaeological foundings indicate that sedentary farming began to take place in West Africa in the 5th millennium B.C.E., with evidence of domesticated cattle having been found for this period as well as limited cereal crops. Around 3000 B.C.E., a major change began to take place in West African society, with microlithic stone tools becoming more common in the Sahel region, including the invention of primitive harpoons and fishing hooks. In the 3rd millennium B.C.E. indigenous West African pastoralists encountered migrating, but developed, hunter-gatherers of the Guinea region.
Fertile Crescent
Fertile Crescent is a term used to describe the region in the Middle East, watered by the Jordan, Euphrates, and Tigris rivers.
The earliest settlement in Jericho (9th millennium B.C.E.) was a Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later, including early settlements (8th millennium B.C.E.) made of mud-brick houses, surrounded by a stone wall, and having a stone tower built into the wall. Dating from this time there is evidence of domesticated emmer wheat, barley and pulses, and hunting of wild animals. By the 6th millennium B.C.E. we find what appears to be an ancient shrine, which would likely indicate intercommunal, religious practices. Findings also include a collective burial (with not all the skeletons completely articulated - jaws removed, faces covered with plaster, cowries used for eyes). Other foundings from this era include stone and bone tools, clay figurines and shell and malachite beads. Around 1500 B.C.E. - 1200 B.C.E. Jericho and other cities of Canaan had already 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 dating to around 5000 B.C.E. The Sialk ziggurat of Kashan, Iran, also dates to this era. By the 4th millennium B.C.E., in connection with a sort of ziggurat and shrine in Nippur, we find a conduit built of bricks, in the form of an arch. Sumerian inscriptions written on clay also appear in Nippur. By 4000 B.C.E. an ancient city of Susa, in Mesopotamia, seems to emerge from earlier villages. Sumerian Cuneiform script dates to no later than about 3500 B.C.E. Other villages begin to spring up around this time in the Ancient Near East as well.
Indus valley civilization
The earliest known farming cultures in south Asia emerged in the hills of Balochistan, Pakistan, which included Mehrgarh in the 7th millennium B.C.E. These semi-nomadic peoples domesticated wheat, barley, sheep, goat, and cattle. Pottery was in use by the 6th millennium B.C.E. Their settlements consisted of mud buildings that housed four internal subdivisions. Burials included elaborate goods such as baskets, stone tools and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants, and occasionally animal sacrifices. Figurines and ornaments of sea shells, limestones, turquoise, lapis lazul, sandstones and polished copper have also been found in the area. By the 4th millennium B.C.E. we find much evidence of manufacturing. Manufacturing technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns, copper melting crucibles, and button seal devices with geometric designs.
By 4000 B.C.E. a pre-Harappan culture emerged, with trade networks, including lapis lazuli and other raw materials. Villagers domesticated numerous crops, including peas, sesame seed, 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 shipbuilding 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 (Iran) coast, northern and central India, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt.
Archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh, Pakistan, discovered that peoples in the Indus Valley had knowledge of medicine and dentistry as early as circa 3300 B.C.E. The Indus Valley Civilization gain credit for the earliest known use of decimal fractions in a uniform system of ancient weights and measures, as well as negative numbers. Ancient Indus Valley artifacts include beautiful, glazed stone faïence beads. The Indus Valley Civilization boasts the earliest known accounts of urban planning. As seen in Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and recently discovered Rakhigarhi, 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. 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 the Middle East.
China
Mesolithic stone tools and coins have been found in Loulan, indicating money and ancient trade in the 8th millennium B.C.E. Houses, kilns, pottery, turquoise carvings, stone and bone tools, and bone flutes are also found in other ancient Chinese villages dating to the same era.
Developed agriculture appears in the 7th millennium B.C.E. in the Peiligang culture (discovered in 1977) in Henan, China, including storing and redistributing crops, millet farming and animal husbandry (pigs). Evidence also indicates toward 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.
Attributed to the later period of Chinese culture, in the Shang Dynasty (1600 B.C.E. - 1046 B.C.E.), the bronze artifacts and oracle bones, which were made of 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).
Ancient China invented the earliest known fireworks during the Song dynasty.
Japan
Ongoing excavations reveal Jomon of ancient Japan as having produced the earliest known pottery in the world, dating to the 11th millennium B.C.E. More stable living patterns gave rise by around 10th millennium B.C.E. to a Mesolithic or Neolithic culture. The Jomon people also created the earliest ground stone tools known (Imamura). They used chipped stone tools, ground stone tools, traps, and bows and were probably semi-sedentary hunters-gatherers, and skillful coastal and deep-water fishermen. They lived in caves and later in groups of either temporary shallow pit dwellings or above-ground houses, leaving rich kitchen middens for modern anthropological study.
Development and decline of civilizations
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 influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilizational 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." According to Toynbee, most civilizations declined and fell because of moral or religious decline, rather than economic or environmental causes.
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 worldview 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 worldview 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 (biologist), 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.
Expansion of civilization
The nature of civilization is that it seeks to spread, to expand, and it has the means by which to do this. Civilization has been spread by introducing agriculture, writing system, and religion to uncivilized tribes. The uncivilized people then adapt to civilized behavior. Civilization has also been spread by force, often with religion used to justify its actions.
Nevertheless some tribes or peoples still remained uncivilized. These cultures are known as primitive. They do not have hierarchical governments, organized religion, writing systems or controlled economic exchange. The little hierarchy that exists, for example respect for the elderly, is by mutual agreement not enforced by any ruling authority.
Negative views of civilization
Religious ascetics in many times and places have attempted to curb the influence of civilization over their lives in order to concentrate on spiritual matters. Over the years many members of civilizations have shunned them, believing that civilization restricts people from living in their natural state. Monasticism 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.
Marxists "believed that the beginning of civilization was the beginning of oppression". As more food was produced and the society's material possessions increased, wealth 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 River and New Guinea. In addition, some feminists believe that civilization is the source of men's domination over women. Together, these ideas make up modern conflict theory in the social sciences.
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 "civilized" societies - 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 for all of the above reasons - they accuse civilizations of restricting humans, oppressing the weak, and damaging the environment. A leading proponent of primitivism is John Zerzan.
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 is entering informational society stage.
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.
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 Ancient Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 B.C.E. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to 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.
Further reading
- BBC on civilization
- "The Clash of Civilizations?", text of the original essay by Samuel P. Huntington (1993)
- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2001) Civilizations, London: Free Press. ISBN 0743202481
- http://history-world.org/
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