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- A civilization is a complex society that creates agricultural surpluses, allowing for specialized labor, social hierarchy, and the establishment of cities.
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Aug 21, 2019 · With this in mind, the Kardashev scale was developed as a way of measuring a civilization's technological advancement based upon how much usable energy it has at its disposal (this was...
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- Overview
- Degrees of complexity
- First civilizations
- What do civilizations have in common?
- What do you think?
•The term civilization refers to complex societies, but the specific definition is contested.
•The advent of civilization depended on the ability of some agricultural settlements to consistently produce surplus food, which allowed some people to specialize in non-agricultural work, which in turn allowed for increased production, trade, population, and social stratification.
•The first civilizations appeared in locations where the geography was favorable to intensive agriculture.
•Governments and states emerged as rulers gained control over larger areas and more resources, often using writing and religion to maintain social hierarchies and consolidate power over larger areas and populations.
Today, almost every city has a supermarket with a wide variety of available foods. We take for granted the fact that people have different types of jobs and that governments exist. But, reliable food sources, specialized work, and governments did not exist for most of human history! They are the products of historical processes that began with the first civilizations several thousand years ago.
A civilization is a complex society that creates agricultural surpluses, allowing for specialized labor, social hierarchy, and the establishment of cities. Developments such as writing, complex religious systems, monumental architecture, and centralized political power have been suggested as identifying markers of civilization, as well. When we see these changes occur, we should stop and ask, “Did people institute these practices because they were beneficial, or were they forced on them?” Historians debate this very question, trying to determine whether civilization was a bottom-up or top-down development.1 Most likely, it was a bit of both.2
The first civilizations appeared in major river valleys, where floodplains contained rich soil and the rivers provided irrigation for crops and a means of transportation. Foundational civilizations developed urbanization and complexity without outside influence and without building on a pre-existing civilization, though they did not all develop simultaneously. Many later civilizations either borrowed elements of, built on, or incorporated—through conquest—other civilizations. Because foundational civilizations arose independently, they are particularly useful to historians and archaeologists who want to understand how civilization first developed.
Geography alone cannot explain the rise of the first civilizations. The process of agricultural intensification had been going on for thousands of years before the first civilizations appeared, and it is important to remember that while agricultural surpluses were necessary for civilization, their existence in a given place did not guarantee that a civilization would develop.3 As civilizations grew, they required increased intensification of agriculture to maintain themselves.4
Cities were at the center of all early civilizations. People from surrounding areas came to cities to live, work, and trade. This meant that large populations of individuals who did not know each other lived and interacted with one another. So, shared institutions, such as government, religion, and language helped create a sense of unity and also led to more specialized roles, such as bureaucrats, priests, and scribes.
Cities concentrated political, religious, and social institutions that were previously spread across many smaller, separate communities, which contributed to the development of states.5 A state is an organized community that lives under a single political structure. A present-day country is a state in this sense, for example. Many civilizations either grew alongside a state or included several states. The political structures that states provided were an important factor in the rise of civilizations because they made it possible to mobilize large amounts of resources and labor and also tied larger communities together by connecting them under a common political system.
Early civilizations were often unified by religion—a system of beliefs and behaviors that deal with the meaning of existence. As more and more people shared the same set of beliefs and practices, people who did not know each other could find common ground and build mutual trust and respect.
It was typical for politics and religion to be strongly connected. In some cases, political leaders also acted as religious leaders. In other cases, religious leaders were different from the political rulers but still worked to justify and support the power of the political leaders. In Ancient Egypt, for example, the kings—later called pharaohs—practiced divine kingship, claiming to be representatives, or even human incarnations, of gods.
Both political and religious organization helped to create and reinforce social hierarchies, which are clear distinctions in status between individual people and between different groups. Political leaders could make decisions that impacted entire societies, such as whether to go to war. Religious leaders gained special status since they alone could communicate between a society and its god or gods.
In addition to these leaders, there were also artisans who provided goods and services, and merchants who engaged in the trade of these goods. There were also lower classes of laborers who performed less specialized work, and in some cases there were slaves. All of these classes added to the complexity and economic production of a city.
•When does a complex society become a civilization?
•What factors were most important to establishing and maintaining a civilization?
•Do you think that social hierarchies are necessary for civilization?
•Are state-level political structures necessary for civilization? Or, can independent cities with a shared culture be a civilization?
Sid Meier's Civilization II. Release date: February 1996. Building on the foundations laid by the first Civilization game in 1991, Sid Meier's Civilization II made a number of meaningful improvements to presentation and gameplay.
Nov 21, 2023 · Simply put, a civilization is a society that has defined cultural habits, social structures, and a government that lives and works together. What is a civilization...
Mar 26, 2021 · A civilization is a singular culture shared by a significant large group of people who live and work co-operatively, a society. The word civilization comes from the Latin civilis, meaning civil, related to the Latin civis, meaning citizen, and civitas, meaning city or city-state, and that also somehow defines the size of the society.
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