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Definition. Civilization (from the Latin civis =citizen and civitas =city) is a term applied to any society which has developed a writing system, government, production of surplus food, division of labor, and urbanization.
- Joshua J. Mark
- Content Director
- Concept of Civilization
- Mesopotamia & The Rise of The City
- Other Civilizations
- Conclusion
The concept of 'civilization' as a state of cultural development superior to others – as the term is often used in the present day – was first developed by the Greeks. The historian Herodotus (l. c. 484-425/413 BCE) famously made the distinction between 'civilized' Greeks and 'barbarous' non-Greeks in his Histories,as noted by scholar Roger Osborne...
Mesopotamia and its Fertile Crescent is known as the 'cradle of civilization' because it is understood as the first to develop the aspects one recognizes today as 'civilizing,' and this began in the region of Sumer. The term 'fertile crescent' was first coined by the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in his 1916 work Ancient Times: A History of the...
Urbanization – though not civilization – is understood to have spread from Mesopotamia to Egypt, but the Egyptians recognized the danger of overextending their cities. The central cultural value of ancient Egypt was ma'at – balance, harmony – ordained by the gods and personified in the goddess Ma'at. The Egyptians believed their region was the best...
'Civilization' is a term that remains loosely defined, and the modern Western understanding of that term is remarkably recent. Up until the mid-19th century, no one even knew Sumer had ever existed outside of a mention in the Bible. Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mesopotamian cuneiformwere not deciphered until the 1820s and 1850s, respectively, and the...
- Joshua J. Mark
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1 The phrase ‘civilized nations’ (also known as ‘civilized peoples’, ‘civilized countries’, or, collectively, as the ‘civilized world’) has long served to distinguish European Christian States from States not thought to possess similar legal systems or values.
Oct 23, 2023 · Many scholars today see human societies as too complex and varied to fit into simple categories of “civilized” or “not civilized.” Their research builds on the discoveries of the past but opens a new vision of how societies develop and interact.
Mar 6, 2024 · noun. location recognized by the United Nations as important to the cultural or natural heritage of humanity. Civilization describes a complex way of life characterized by urban areas, shared methods of communication, administrative infrastructure, and division of labor.
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Jun 27, 2023 · Humans. The civilisation myth: How new discoveries are rewriting human history. In an evolutionary eyeblink, our species has gone from hunting and gathering to living in complex societies. We...
