What Makes A Civilization?

Stearns, Peter N. et al. World Civilizations: The Global Experience, AP Edition. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., Longman, 2003.

The early civilizations play a key role in society today. These civilizations had their own traditions and beliefs which made them all unique. The Greek, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian civilizations all had contrasting beliefs, religions, customs, traditions, and political views which made them all individually distinct. Through studying the three ancient civilizations, we are able to analyze the differences of these civilizations.

When you look back in history to the development and the contributions of both the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, you see that there was a lot accomplished, as well as a lot created. The earliest forms of writing developed in Mesopotamia, while Egypt was referred to the “Gift of the Nile” by traveler Herodotus (McKay,42). Development of cities was another major marker, especially in the “old world”, of how people eventually determined civilizations and what they represented. According to McKay, civilizations were determined by people who considered themselves more “civilized”, urban people mostly. Made up of cities, written rules of law, and social justice codes, Mesopotamia and Egypt would develop into two of the largest civilizations in history.

The first civilizations, the foundations for future empires, were all founded and created between 3500 B.C.E. and 500 B.C.E. by groups of nomadic peoples who decided to settle in an area for certain group specific reasons. Some of the main states of the first civilization were Mesopotamia, Norte Chico, Egypt, Indus Valley, China, and Olmec. The second wave civilizations, built between 500 B.C.E. and 500 C.E., included the Persians, the Greeks, Romans, Chinese (Qin and Han), and India (Mauryan and Gupta). The first wave civilizations were sparked by the agricultural movement that led to the settlement of large groups of people in areas that became the cities and states that formed these first civilizations. The rise of civilization led to

Civilization: an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached.

“The condition that exists when people have developed effective ways of organizing a society and care about art, science, etc.” This is the definition of civilization. So when I explain the different characteristics of the western civilizations, which is mainly made up of all the countries in the world that have roots that go way back to ancient Greece. Although western societies have a lot of similarities as todays and other civilizations, it’s still tend to be known to as pretty rare, mainly in the way “western” think and believe. Western people thinking investigates something that is thought to be true and questions it, they were the type of humans to heavily test everyone’s mind. They would challenge one another to think outside of what

Many of the early world civilizations had similar experiences when evolving to become the influential societies that affected other societies. They were called the first civilizations because they were able to form the first functional communities, successful systems of organized laws over people, the distinction of social classes, economic income, and development of arts and educations. Two of histories well-known civilizations, Mesopotamia and Ancient China had similar experiences in the beginnings of their histories, they still have a different cultural and political views.

Philosophers Sigmund Freud and Eric Hobsbawm present two explanations of the origins of civilization in their books Civilization and its Discontent and Nations and Nationalism since 1780, respectively. In doing so, each philosopher establish a distinct, and somewhat similar, definition of civilization. According to Freud, “’civilization’ describes the whole sum of the achievements and the regulations which distinguish our lives from those of our animal ancestors.” (Freud, 63) There are distinct features of a civilization, such as beauty, the “encouragement of man’s higher mental activities – his intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements” (Freud, 69) and the social relations between men. While Freud refers to this union of a group

First of all, one characteristic of a civilization is its writing system. Stated from document 3 “Civilizations develop writing systems” “Writing

According to Dictionary.com the definition of complex is consisting of many different and connected parts. Civilizations show an extraordinary amount of complexity. To accomplish that multifaceted nature, assorted “ingredients” and the right “Goldilocks conditions” must be set up. Egypt had diverse ingredients in a precise arrangement that has made it such a complex civilization. Some diverse ingredients would be its social structure, religion, geography/climate, and entertainment.

A civilization refers to “a particular and distinctive type of human society” (Strayer, pg. 90). Civilizations aren’t always different from one another nor are they the exact same. Each civilization has some form of a unique characteristic that differentiates itself from the rest. For example, the Ancient Egyptians and the Hindus from Ancient India. They both have a permanent arrangement of societal roles, yet they aren’t constructed or operated in the same manner. These two locations are the main topics of this discussion/comparison.

According to archaeologist in order to be defined as a civilization certain criteria must be met. Early archaeologists believed in order to be considered a civilization a society must have cultural superiority, which meant they must have the ability to read and write. If this was the sole criteria used to judge if a society was labeled a civilization, then you could say the Inca of South America, who constructed cities on top of mountains and had a complex system of irrigation canals, were not one because they did not have a system for reading or writing. Modern archaeologists now think of civilization as not better but different. The modern definition of civilization consists of the development of cities,

In this essay I will be considering only but one of the many questions that archaeologists analyse when researching the human past. As the title suggests, did civilization, or, a term preferably used by scholars; social complexity, arise from a conflicted band of nomadic people or from a mutual consensus among them? As well as my own thought’s, I will be discussing the ideologies of a number of professionals, both in archaeology and social anthropology, focusing mainly on the early development of the archaic Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican civilisations.

According to National Geographic a civilization is a “society with highly developed culture and technology.”Every civilization has distinct characteristics in a common. For example, they have organized Central Government /Complex Institution, Job Specialization,Cities, Art and Architecture Technology , and Writing / Recording Keeping. Historians do not agree on how many characteristics are essential to success of a civilization. After analyzing all the characteristics, I believe that Organized Central Government / Complex Institution,Job Specialization,and Art and Architecture / Technology.

Civilization to me is what makes up our lives. As humans we are part of different civilizations, but these civilizations are made up of specific cultures and societies. The actual book definition of a civilization would be, “networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined by the economic, military, diplomatic, social and cultural interactions among them.” Over the course of the past couple weeks, I have had the chance to listen in on a podcast actually provided by Stanford University. This podcast is being made while a professor is teaching a class covering the geography of world cultures. I believe that geography has a lot to do with civilization, not only because location in this world plays a role in our lives,