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The ancientSumeriansofMesopotamiawere the oldest civilization in the world, beginning about 4000 BCE.
Ancient Egyptprovides an example of anearly culturecivilization.[1]

Acivilization(also spelledcivilisationinBritish English) is anycomplex societycharacterized by the development ofthe state,social stratification,urbanization,andsymbolicsystems ofcommunicationbeyondsigned or spoken languages(namely,writing systemsandgraphic arts).[2][3][4][5][6]

Civilizations include features such asagriculture,architecture,infrastructure,technological advancement,currency,taxation,regulation,andspecialization of labour.[5][6][7]

Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced"culture,in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures.[8][9][10][11]In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures ofnomadic pastoralists,Neolithicsocieties, orhunter-gatherers;however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided intohierarchicalsocial classeswith a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage inintensive agriculture,mining,small-scale manufacture andtrade.Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.[12]

The wordcivilizationrelates to the Latincivitasor 'city'. As theNational Geographic Societyhas explained it: "This is why the most basic definition of the wordcivilizationis 'asocietymade up of cities.' "[13] The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of theNeolithic RevolutioninWest Asia,culminating in the relatively rapid process ofurban revolutionandstate formation,a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.

History of the concept

The End of DinnerbyJules-Alexandre Grün(1913). The emergence oftable mannersand other forms ofetiquetteandself-restraintare presented as a characteristic ofcivilizedsociety byNorbert Eliasin his bookThe Civilizing Process(1939).

The English wordcivilizationcomes from the Frenchcivilisé('civilized'), fromLatin:civilis('civil'), related tocivis('citizen') andcivitas('city').[14]The fundamental treatise isNorbert Elias'sThe Civilizing Process(1939), which traces socialmoresfrommedieval courtly societyto theearly modern period.[a]InThe Philosophy of Civilization(1923),Albert Schweitzeroutlines two opinions: one purelymaterialand the other material andethical.He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress".[16]

Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, byVictor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau,and the first use in English is attributed toAdam Ferguson,who in his 1767Essay on the History of Civil Societywrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation".[17]The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit ofprogresscharacteristic of theAge of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during theFrench Revolution,"civilization" was used in thesingular,never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French.[18]The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century,[b]but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context ofethnography).[19]Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron. Using the terms "civilization" and "culture" as equivalents are controversial and generally rejected so that for example some types of culture are not normally described as civilizations.[20]

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings ofRousseau,particularly his work about education,Emile.Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord withhuman nature,and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original discursive or pre-rational natural unity" (seenoble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first byJohann Gottfried Herderand later by philosophers such asKierkegaardandNietzsche.This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice.[18]InWorld War II,Leo Strauss,having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behindNazismand Germanmilitarismandnihilism.[21]

Characteristics

TheAcropolis of Athens:Greeceis traditionally seen as the cradle of a distinct European or"Western" civilization.[22][23]

Social scientists such asV. Gordon Childehave named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.[24][25]Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types oflivelihood,settlementpatterns,forms of government,social stratification,economic systems,literacyand other cultural traits.Andrew Nikiforukargues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and considersslaveryto be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations.[26]

All civilizations have depended onagriculturefor subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources.[27][28]

The traditional "surplus model" postulates that cereal farming results in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificialfertilization,irrigationandcrop rotation.It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare.[29]Grain surpluses have been especially important becausegrain can be storedfor a long time.

Research from theJournal of Political Economycontradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal farming produced civilization because of theappropriabilityof yearly harvest. Rural populations that could only grow cereals could be taxed allowing for a taxing elite and urban development. This also had a negative effect on rural population, increasing relative agricultural output per farmer. Farming efficiency created food surplus and sustained the food surplus through decreasing rural population growth in favour of urban growth. Suitability of highly productive roots and tubers was in fact a curse of plenty, which prevented the emergence of states and impeded economic development.[30][31]

A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations includedsoldiers,artisans,priestsand priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of thePacific Northwestand perhaps during the MesolithicNatufian culture.It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication.[32]

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The wordcivilizationis sometimes defined as "living in cities".[33]Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely thestate.[34]State societies are more stratified[35]than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. Theruling class,normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government orbureaucracy.Morton Fried,aconflict theoristandElman Service,an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems andsocial inequality.This system of classification contains four categories.[36]

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate morepersonal possessionsthan nomadic people. Some people also acquirelanded property,or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they musttradetheir goods and services for food in amarketsystem, or receive food through the levy oftribute,redistributivetaxation,tariffsortithesfrom the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through agift economysupplemented by limitedbartersystems. By the earlyIron Age,contemporary civilizations developedmoneyas a medium of exchange for increasingly complex transactions. In a village, the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled. From the days of the earliest monetarized civilizations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems have benefited the social and political elites.

The transition from simpler to more complex economies does not necessarily mean an improvement in the living standards of the populace. For example, although the Middle Ages is often portrayed as an era of decline from the Roman Empire, studies have shown that the average stature of males in the Middle Ages (c. 500 to 1500 CE) was greater than it was for males during the preceding Roman Empire and the succeedingEarly Modern Period(c. 1500 to 1800 CE).[39][40]Also, thePlains Indiansof North America in the 19th century were taller than their "civilized" American and European counterparts. The average stature of a population is a good measurement of the adequacy of its access to necessities, especially food, and its freedom from disease.[41]

Writing,developed first by people inSumer,is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state".[42]Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, the writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other. However, writing is not always necessary for civilization, as shown by theIncacivilization of the Andes, which did not use writing at all but except for a complex recording system consisting of knotted strings of different lengths and colors: the "Quipus",and still functioned as a civilized society.

Aristotle,theAncient Greekphilosopher and scientist

Aided by their division of labour and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organizedreligion,development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.

Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as opposed to trading or manufacturing capacities, the territorial extensions of its power, the complexity of itsdivision of labour,and thecarrying capacityof itsurban centres.Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual andtort-based legal systems, art, architecture, mathematics, scientific understanding,metallurgy,political structures, and organized religion.

As a contrast with other societies

The idea of civilization implies a progression or development from a previous "uncivilized" state. Traditionally, cultures that defined themselves as "civilized" often did so in contrast to other societies or human groupings viewed as less civilized, calling the latterbarbarians,savages,andprimitives.Indeed, the modern Western idea of civilization developed as a contrast to theindigenouscultures European settlers encountered during the European colonization of the Americas and Australia.[43]The term "primitive," though once used inanthropology,has now been largely condemned by anthropologists because of its derogatory connotations and because it implies that the cultures it refers to are relics of a past time that do not change or progress.[44]

Because of this, societies regarding themselves as "civilized" have sometimes sought to dominate and assimilate "uncivilized" cultures into a "civilized" way of living.[45]In the 19th century, the idea of European culture as "civilized" and superior to "uncivilized" non-European cultures was fully developed, and civilization became a core part of European identity.[46]The idea of civilization can also be used as a justification for dominating another culture and dispossessing a people of their land. For example, inAustralia,British settlers justified the displacement of Indigenous Australians by observing that the land appeared uncultivated and wild, which to them reflected that the inhabitants were not civilized enough to "improve" it.[43]The behaviors and modes of subsistence that characterize civilization have been spread bycolonization,invasion,religious conversion,the extension ofbureaucratic controlandtrade,and by the introduction of new technologies to cultures that did not previously have them. Though aspects of culture associated with civilization can be freely adopted through contact between cultures, since early modern times Eurocentric ideals of "civilization" have been widely imposed upon cultures through coercion and dominance. These ideals complemented aphilosophythat assumed there were innate differences between "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples.[46]

Cultural identity

Further information:Cultural areaandculture

"Civilization" can also refer to 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 manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including astate-baseddecision-makingapparatus, aliterature,professionalart,architecture,organizedreligionand complex customs ofeducation,coercionand control associated with maintaining the elite.

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 beingChinesecivilization and its influence on nearby civilizations suchas Korea,Japan andVietnam[47]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.[48][49]

ABlue Shield Internationalmission in Libya during the war in 2011 to protect the cultural assets there.

It is precisely the protection of this cultural identity that is becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally. According to international law, theUnited NationsandUNESCOtry to set up and enforce relevant rules. The aim is to preserve thecultural heritageof humanity and also the cultural identity, especially in the case of war and armed conflict. According toKarl von Habsburg,President ofBlue Shield International,the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is often the opponent's cultural identity, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to destroy the particularly sensitive cultural memory (museums, archives, monuments, etc.), the grown cultural diversity, and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or community.[50][51][52][53][54][55]

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopherOswald Spengler,[56]uses the German wordKultur,"culture", for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believed a civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the decline of a culture as "the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable".[56]

This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historianArnold J. Toynbeein the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volumeA 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 the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes.

Samuel P. Huntingtondefines 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".[48]

Complex systems

Depiction of unitedMedesandPersiansat theApadana,Persepolis.

Another group of theorists, making use ofsystems theory,looks at a civilization as acomplex system,i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analysed that work in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social and cultural interactions among them. Any organization is a complexsocial systemand a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard against superficial and misleading analogies in the study and description of civilizations.

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 theSilk RoadthroughCentral AsiaandIndian Oceansea routes linking theRoman Empire,Persian Empire,India and China, were well established 2000 years ago when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. The first evidence of such long-distance trade is in theancient world.During theUruk period,Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan.[57]Resin found later in theRoyal Cemetery at Uris suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.

Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system",a process known asglobalization.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 Wilkinsonhas proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of theMesopotamianandEgyptiancivilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE.[58]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 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 theCrusading movementas the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk sinceancient times,and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recentEuropean colonialism.[citation needed]

History

See also:Human history

The notion of human history as a succession of "civilizations" is an entirely modern one. In the EuropeanAge of Discovery,emergingModernitywas put into stark contrast with theNeolithicandMesolithicstage of the cultures of many of the peoples they encountered.[59][obsolete source]Nonetheless, developments in the Neolithic stage, such as agriculture and sedentary settlement, were critical to the development of modern conceptions of civilization.[60][61]

Urban Revolution

Main articles:Neolithic,Bronze Age,andCradle of civilization

TheNatufian culturein theLevantine corridorprovides the earliest case of a Neolithic Revolution, with the planting of cereal crops attested fromc.11,000 BCE.[62][63]The earliest neolithic technology and lifestyle were established first in Western Asia (for example atGöbekli Tepe,from about 9,130 BCE), later in theYellow RiverandYangtzebasins in China (for example thePeiligangandPengtoushancultures), and from these cores spread across Eurasia.Mesopotamiais the site of the earliest civilizations developing from 7,400 years ago. This area has been evaluated by Beverley Milton-Edwards as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the building of the earliest cities and the development of written cursive script".[64]Similar pre-civilized "neolithic revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in northwesternSouth America(theCaral-Supe civilization)[65]and inMesoamerica.[66]TheBlack Seaarea served as a cradle of European civilization. The site ofSolnitsata– a prehistoric fortified (walled) stone settlement (prehistoriccity) (5500–4200 BCE) – is believed by some archaeologists to be the oldest known town in present-day Europe.[67][68][69][70]

The8.2 Kiloyear Arid Eventand the5.9 KiloyearInter-pluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread ofdeserts.[71]Thisclimate changeshifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities, which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the appearance of walled cities, seen by some as a characteristic of early civilizations.[72]

The ruins ofMesoamericancityTeotihuacan

This "urban revolution"—a term introduced by Childe in the 1930s—from the 4th millennium BCE,[73]marked the beginning of the accumulation of transferableeconomic surpluses,which helped economies and cities develop. Urban revolutions were associated with the statemonopoly of violence,the appearance of awarrior,or soldier, class andendemic warfare(a state of continual or frequent warfare), the rapid development ofhierarchies,and the use ofhuman sacrifice.[74][75]

The civilized urban revolution in turn was dependent upon the development ofsedentism,thedomesticationof grains, plants and animals, the permanence ofsettlementsand development oflifestylesthat facilitatedeconomies of scaleand accumulation of surplus production by particular social sectors. The transition fromcomplex culturestocivilizations,while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolized by an eliteruling class[76]who practiced human sacrifice.[77]

Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitistChalcolithiccivilizations began to rise in various"cradles"from around 3600 BCE beginning withMesopotamia,expanding into large-scalekingdomsandempiresin the course of the Bronze Age (Akkadian Empire,Indus Valley Civilization,Old Kingdom of Egypt,Neo-Sumerian Empire,Middle Assyrian Empire,Babylonian Empire,Hittite Empire,and to some degree the territorial expansions of theElamites,Hurrians,AmoritesandEbla).

Outside the Old World, development took place independently in thePre-Columbian Americas.Urbanization in theCaral-Supe civilizationin coastal Peru began about 3500 BCE.[78]In North America, theOlmeccivilization emerged about 1200 BCE; the oldest knownMayancity, located in Guatemala, dates to about 750 BCE.[79]andTeotihuacanin Mexico was one of the largest cities in the world in 350 CE, with a population of about 125,000.[80]

Axial Age

Main article:Axial Age
Further information:Iron Age,Stoicism,Judaism,Zoroastrianism,Hinduism,Spread of Buddhism,Confucianism,andTaoism

TheBronze Age collapsewas followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in a period from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE whichKarl Jasperstermed theAxial Age,presented as a critical transitional phase leading toclassical civilization.[81]

Modernity

Main article:Modernity
Further information:Middle Ages,Early modern period,Great Divergence,andAge of Discovery
See also:Culture,Major religious groups,World language,andClash of Civilizations

A major technological and cultural transition tomodernitybegan approximately 1500 CE inWestern Europe,and from this beginning new approaches toscienceand law spread rapidly around the world, incorporating earlier cultures into the technological andindustrial societyof the present.[77][82]

Fall of civilizations

Main article:Societal collapse

Civilizations are traditionally understood as ending in one of two ways; either through incorporation into another expanding civilization (e.g. as Ancient Egypt was incorporated into Hellenistic Greek, and subsequently Roman civilizations), or by collapsing and reverting to a simpler form of living, as happens in so-called Dark Ages.[83]

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general theory.

  • Ibn Khaldun'sMuqaddimahinfluenced theories of the analysis, growth, and decline of the Islamic civilization.[84]He suggested repeated invasions from nomadic peoples limited development and led to social collapse.
    Barbarian invasionsplayed an important role in the fall of theRoman Empire.
  • Edward Gibbon's workThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empireis a well-known and detailed analysis of the fall of Roman civilization. Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall ofConstantinopleto theOttoman Turksin 1453 CE. 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".[85]
  • Theodor Mommsenin hisHistory of Romesuggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of theWestern Roman Empirein 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis", "growth", "senescence", "collapse" and "decay".
  • Oswald Spengler,in hisDecline of the WestrejectedPetrarch'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 inplutocracyand ultimatelyimperialism.
  • Arnold J. Toynbeein hisA Study of Historysuggested 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 culturalelitebecame aparasiticelite, leading to the rise of internal and externalproletariats.
  • Joseph TainterinThe Collapse of Complex Societiessuggested that there werediminishing returnstocomplexity,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 CE.
  • Jared Diamondin his 2005 bookCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeedsuggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such asdeforestationandsoil erosion;climate change;dependence uponlong-distance tradefor needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
  • Peter Turchinin hisHistorical DynamicsandAndrey Korotayevet al.in theirIntroduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trendssuggest 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 sociodemographiccyclewe observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively highpopulation growthrates, 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 collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasingpopulation growthleads 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.[86][87]
  • Peter Heatherargues in his bookThe Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians[88]that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a 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 the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to theHanandTangdynasties of China, to the MuslimAbbasid Caliphateand others.
  • Bryan Ward-Perkins,in his bookThe Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization,[89]argues from mostly archaeological evidence that the collapse of Roman civilization in western Europe had deleterious impacts on the living standards of the population, unlike some historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing for the elite disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar impacts have been postulated for theDark Ageafter the LateBronze Age collapsein the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of theMaya,onEaster Islandand elsewhere.
  • Arthur Demarestargues inAncient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization,[90]using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology,paleoecology,and epigraphy, 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.
  • Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "a review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended toover-exploittheir forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society ".[91]
  • Thomas Homer-Dixonconsiders the fall in theenergy return on investments.The energy expended to energy yield ratio is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or collapse.[92]
  • Feliks Konecznyin his work "On the Plurality of Civilizations" calls his study the science on civilizations. He asserts that civilizations fall not because they must or there exist some cyclical or a "biological" life span and that there stil exist two ancient civilizations – Brahmin-Hindu and Chinese – which are not ready to fall any time soon. Koneczny claimed that civilizations cannot be mixed into hybrids, an inferior civilization when given equal rights within a highly developed civilization will overcome it. One of Koneczny's claims in his study on civilizations is that "a person cannot be civilized in two or more ways" without falling into what he calls an "abcivilized state" (as in abnormal). He also stated that when two or more civilizations exist next to one another and as long as they are vital, they will be in an existential combat imposing its own "method of organizing social life" upon the other.[93]Absorbing alien "method of organizing social life" that is civilization and giving it equal rights yields a process of decay and decomposition.

Future

See also:Global catastrophic risk
A world map of major civilizations according to the political hypothesisClash of CivilizationsbySamuel P. Huntington.

According to political scientistSamuel P. Huntington,the 21st century will be characterized by aclash of civilizations,[48]which he believes will replace the conflicts betweennation-statesand ideologies that were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, this viewpoint been strongly challenged by others such asEdward Said,Muhammed Asadi andAmartya Sen.[94]Ronald InglehartandPippa Norrishave argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between theMuslim worldand the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology, although they note that this lack of tolerance is likely to lead to an eventual rejection of (true) democracy.[95]InIdentity and ViolenceSen questions if people should be divided along the lines of a supposed "civilization", defined by religion and culture only. He argues that this ignores the many others identities that make up people and leads to a focus on differences.

Cultural HistorianMorris Bermanargues inDark Ages America: the End of Empirethat in the corporate consumerist United States, the very factors that once propelled it to greatness―extreme individualism, territorial and economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth―have pushed the United States across a critical threshold where collapse is inevitable. Politically associated with over-reach, and as a result of the environmental exhaustion and polarization of wealth between rich and poor, he concludes the current system is fast arriving at a situation where continuation of the existing system saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy is physically, socially, economically and politically impossible.[96]Although developed in much more depth, Berman's thesis is similar in some ways to that of Urban Planner,Jane Jacobswho argues that the five pillars of United States culture are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism and the growing gulf between rich and poor.[97]

Cultural criticand authorDerrick Jensenargues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion.[98]Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life".[99]This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

TheKardashev scaleclassifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The scale is only hypothetical, but it puts energy consumption in a cosmic perspective. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist.

Non-human civilizations

The current scientific consensus is that human beings are the only animal species with the cognitive ability to create civilizations that has emerged on Earth. A recent thought experiment, thesilurian hypothesis,however, considers whether it would "be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record" given the paucity of geological information about eras before thequaternary.[100]

Astronomers speculate about the existence of communicating intelligent civilizations within and beyond the Milky Way galaxy, usually using variants of theDrake equation.[101]They conductsearches for such intelligences– such as for technological traces, called "technosignatures".[102]The proposed proto-scientific field "xenoarchaeology"is concerned with the study of artifact remains of non-human civilizations to reconstruct and interpret past lives of alien societies if such get discovered and confirmed scientifically.[103][104]

See also

Notes

  1. ^It remains the most influential sociological study of the topic, spawning its own body of secondary literature. Notably,Hans Peter Duerrattacked it in a major work (3,500 pages in five volumes, published 1988–2002). Elias, at the time a nonagenarian, was still able to respond to the criticism the year before his death. In 2002, Duerr was himself criticized by Michael Hinz'sDer Zivilisationsprozeß: Mythos oder Realität(2002), saying that his criticism amounted to hateful defamation of Elias, through excessive standards ofpolitical correctness.[15]
  2. ^For example, in the titleA narrative of the loss of the Winterton East Indiaman wrecked on the coast of Madagascar in 1792; and of the sufferings connected with that event. To which is subjoined a short account of the natives of Madagascar, with suggestions as to their civilizationsby J. Hatchard, L.B. Seeley and T. Hamilton, London, 1820.

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Bibliography

Further reading

  • Gribbin, John,"Alone in the Milky Way: Why We Are Probably the Only Intelligent Life in the Galaxy",Scientific American,vol. 319, no. 3 (September 2018), pp. 94–99. "Is life likely to exist elsewhere in the [Milky Way] galaxy? Almost certainly yes, given the speed with which it appeared on Earth. Is another technological civilization likely to exist today? Almost certainly no, given the chain of circumstances that led to our existence. These considerations suggest that we are unique not just on our planet but in the whole Milky Way. And if our planet is so special, it becomes all the more important to preserve this unique world for ourselves, our descendants and the many creatures that call Earth home." (p. 99.)
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