:
Greece is traditionally seen as the cradle of a distinct European or
"Western" civilization. Social scientists such as
V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of
livelihood,
settlement patterns,
forms of government,
social stratification, economic systems,
literacy and other cultural traits.
Andrew Nikiforuk argues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and considers
slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations. All civilizations have depended on
agriculture for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources. Most developed and permanent civilizations depended on cereal agriculture. 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 artificial
fertilization,
irrigation and
crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare. Grain surpluses have been especially important because
grain can be stored for a long time. Research from the
Journal of Political Economy contradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal farming produced civilization because of the
appropriability of the 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 the 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. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations included
soldiers,
artisans,
priests and 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 the
Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic
Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication. Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word
civilization is sometimes defined as "living in cities". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade. Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the
state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The
ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or
bureaucracy.
Morton Fried, a
conflict theorist and
Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and
social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories. •
Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally
egalitarian. •
Horticultural–pastoralist societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes: chief and commoner. •
Highly stratified structures, or
chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave. •
Civilizations, with complex
social hierarchies and organized, institutional
forms of government. Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more
personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire
landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must
trade their goods and services for food in a
market system, or receive food through the levy of
tribute, redistributive
taxation,
tariffs or
tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through a
gift economy supplemented by limited
barter systems. By the early
Iron Age, contemporary civilizations developed
money as 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 succeeding
Early Modern Period (c. 1500 to 1800 CE). Also, the
Plains Indians of 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.
Writing, developed first by people in
Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state". 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 the
Inca civilization 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 colours: the "
Quipus", and still functioned as a civilized society. , the
Ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aided by their division of labour and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized
religion, 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 its
division of labour, and the
carrying capacity of its
urban centres. Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and
tort-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 latter
barbarians,
savages, and
primitives. Indeed, the modern Western idea of civilization developed as a contrast to the
indigenous cultures European settlers encountered during the European colonization of the Americas and Australia. The term "primitive," though once used in
anthropology, 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. Because of this, societies regarding themselves as "civilized" have sometimes sought to dominate and assimilate "uncivilized" cultures into a "civilized" way of living. 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. The idea of civilization can also be used as a justification for dominating another culture and dispossessing a people of their land. For example, in
Australia, 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. The behaviours and modes of subsistence that characterize civilization have been spread by
colonization,
invasion,
religious conversion, the extension of
bureaucratic control and
trade, 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 a
philosophy that assumed there were innate differences between "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples. == Cultural identity ==