Civilization: From Nomadic Life to the Farm and City
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. The term is difficult to define because not all "civilizations" include every one of the above facets. The term is often used, therefore, to suggest a highly developed culture.
The first civilizations include:
Indus Valley Civilization: circa 7000 to circa 600 BCE
Mesopotamia's Sumerian civilization: circa 4000-1750 BCE
Egyptian civilization: circa 6000-30 BCE
Although the Göbekli Tepe civilization (circa 10000 BCE) and China are sometimes included in this list, the above were already well-established by the time of China's prehistoric Xia Dynasty (circa 2070-1600 BCE) and its cities, while the people of Göbekli Tepe seem to have been semi-nomadic and moved on after building the site. Others, such as the Minoan, Mycenaean, and Gandhara civilizations, all formed after China's Xia Dynasty.
At the same time, China highlights the difficulty of defining "civilization" as there were already permanent settlements (though not "cities") along the Yellow River by 5000 BCE. Mesopotamia, as the site of the Fertile Crescent, is famously known as the "cradle of civilization" which saw the rise of the first cities, but this designation was made prior to the identification of the Indus Valley Civilization in 1924-1925 or the discovery of Göbekli Tepe (first recorded in 1963) in 1994.
Even so, Mesopotamia is still regarded as the birthplace of civilization as the people who built Göbekli Tepe are thought to have been semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers and the Indus Valley Civilization did not begin constructing its great cities until the Mature Harappan Period (circa 2800 to circa 1900 BCE) whereas the city of Eridu in Mesopotamia was founded circa 5400 BCE and the oldest cities in Egypt date to circa 4000 BCE.
The construction of cities has always been considered a primary requirement for a culture to be regarded as a civilization even if it lacks a writing system (as in the case of the Inca civilization) which is also understood as a central civilizing attribute.
Civilizations developed from hunter-gatherers who first established semi-permanent and then permanent communities after settling into an agrarian lifestyle and beginning to produce surplus food. An abundance of food meant that not everyone had to work the land to eat, and so a division of labor was established with people working different jobs and purchasing food by that work, for example, potters who would sell their ceramics.
Division of labor led to the production of surplus artifacts, which, along with food, could be offered in trade to other communities. Long-distance trade, it is thought, led to the development of writing systems in maintaining business agreements. The rudimentary form of government that had worked with a small community had, by this stage, become more highly developed and centralized and usually included a religious component, leading to the construction of temples and a written body of literature concerning the gods. All of these aspects taken together are, more or less, recognized as constituting a civilization.
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 ancient Greeks. The historian Herodotus (484-425/413 BCE) famously made the distinction between "civilized" Greeks and "barbarous" non-Greeks in his Histories, as noted by scholar Roger Osborne:
The word 'civilization' was first used in eighteenth-century France, but the western idea of a civilized society dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. During the classical period, Greeks began to see themselves as not just different from, but better than, other peoples.
When Herodotus, writing in the mid-fifth century BCE, referred to 'the barbarians', this was really a shorthand term for non-Greeks; but by the time of Aristotle, a hundred years later, barbarians and barbarous nations could be defined by certain types of behavior – their treatment of slaves, a barter rather than money economy – that were frowned on by the civilized Greeks. Barbarians had, through their cultural habits, become lesser people than the Greeks, who were seen by themselves, and later Europeans, as the epitome of civilization. (3)
This became the prevailing view in the West and, in some scholarly and political circles, still is, but "civilization" is no longer understood by anthropologists and scholars as a qualifying term suggesting one culture is better than another but, rather, to define what a "mature culture" is. To this end, as noted, for a culture to be regarded as a "civilization", it should have developed:
Of these five, urbanization is often emphasized, as a "civilization" cannot be nomadic. The establishment of cities is a central aspect of any civilization because a sedentary community is understood as the first step in the development of any of the other aspects.
This is why, when this concept is applied to the people of the Göbekli Tepe civilization, they are not considered one of the earliest "civilizations" because they were semi-nomadic. At a certain point circa 12000-11000 years ago, a pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer society in the region of modern-day Turkey began forming permanent settlements and then worked together to build the structure known today as Göbekli Tepe (a modern-day designation meaning "Potbelly Hill" – the original name of the site is unknown). The purpose of Göbekli Tepe is undetermined – though most scholars believe it was a temple – as is the reason why it was buried and abandoned in antiquity.
Although this society did construct permanent housing, it seems it may have only been for the purpose of building Göbekli Tepe, and sometime after that had been accomplished, they moved on; it would be left to others to build the cities which would come to define "civilization".
⇒ Civilization: From Nomadic Life to the Farm and City
