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The Norte Chico civilization ( dated from 9210 BCE -1800 BCE, also Caral or Caral-Supe civilization)^[1] was a complex pre-Columbian society that included as many as 30 major population centers in what is now the Norte Chico region of north-central coastal Peru. It is the oldest known civilization in the Americas and one of the six sites where civilization separately originated in the ancient world. It flourished between the 30th century BC and the 18th century BC. The alternative name, Caral-Supe, is derived from the Sacred City of Caral^[2] in the Supe Valley, a large and well-studied Norte Chico site. Complex society in Norte Chico arose a millennium after Sumer in Mesopotamia, was contemporaneous with the Egyptian pyramids, and predated the Mesoamerican Olmec by nearly two millennia.

In archaeological nomenclature, Norte Chico is a pre-ceramic culture of the pre-Columbian Late Archaic; it completely lacked ceramics and apparently had almost no art. The most impressive achievement of the civilization was its monumental architecture, including large earthwork platform mounds and sunken circular plazas. Archaeological evidence suggests use of textile technology and, possibly, the worship of common god symbols, both of which recur in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Sophisticated government is assumed to have been required to manage the ancient Norte Chico. Questions remain over its organization, particularly the impact of food resources on politics.

Archaeologists have been aware of ancient sites in the area since at least the 1940s; early work occurred at Aspero on the coast, a site identified as early as 1905,^[3] and later at Caral further inland.

It was not until the late 1990s that Peruvian archaeologists, led by Ruth Shady Solís, provided the first extensive documentation of the civilization with work at Caral.^[4] A 2001 paper in Science, providing a survey of the Caral research,^[5] and a 2004 article in Nature, describing fieldwork and radiocarbon dating across a wider area,^[6] revealed Norte Chico's full significance and led to widespread interest.^[7]

History and geography[link]

Andean Peru has been recognized as one of six global areas where there was independent, indigenous development of civilization, and as one of two, along with Mesoamerica, in the Western Hemisphere.^[6] Norte Chico has pushed back the horizon for complex societies in the Peruvian region by more than one thousand years. The Chavín culture, circa 900 BC, had long been considered the first civilization of the area. It is still regularly cited as such in general works.^[8][9]

The discovery of Norte Chico has also shifted the focus of research away from the highland areas of the Andes and lowlands adjacent to the mountains (where the Chavín, and later Inca, had their major centers) to the Peruvian littoral, or coastal regions. Norte Chico is located in a north-central area of the coast, approximately 150 to 200 km north of Lima, roughly bounded by the Lurín Valley on the south and the Casma Valley on the north. It comprises four coastal valleys: the Huaura, Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza; known sites are concentrated in the latter three, which share a common coastal plain. The three principal valleys cover only 1,800 km², and research has emphasized the density of the population centers.^[10]

The Peruvian littoral appears an "improbable, even aberrant" candidate for the "pristine" development of civilization, compared to other world centers.^[11] It is extremely arid, bounded by two rain shadows (caused by the Andes to the east, and the Pacific trade winds to the west). The region is punctuated by more than 50 rivers that carry Andean snowmelt. The development of widespread irrigation from these water sources is seen as decisive in the emergence of Norte Chico;^[12][13] since all of the monumental architecture at various sites has been found close to irrigation channels.

Remains of the Caral pyramids in the arid Supe Valley

The radiocarbon work of Jonathan Haas et al., found that 10 of 95 samples taken in the Pativilca and Fortaleza areas dated from before 3500 BC; the oldest, dating from 9210 BC, provides "limited indication" of human settlement during the Pre-Columbian Early Archaic era. Two dates of 3700 BC are associated with communal architecture, but are likely to be anomalous. It is from 3200 BC onward that large-scale human settlement and communal construction are clearly apparent.^[6] Mann, in a survey of the literature in 2005, suggests "sometime before 3200 BC, and possibly before 3500 BC" as the beginning date of the Norte Chico formative period. He notes that the earliest date securely associated with a city is 3500 BC, at Huaricanga, in the Fortaleza area of the north, based on Haas' dates.^[11]

Haas' early third millennium dates suggest that the development of coastal and inland sites occurred in parallel. But, from 2500 to 2000 BC, during the period of greatest expansion, the population and development decisively shifted toward the inland sites. All development apparently occurred at large interior sites such as Caral, though they remained dependent on fish and shellfish from the coast.^[6] The peak in dates is in keeping with Shady's dates at Caral, which show habitation from 2627 BC to 2020 BC.^[5] That coastal and inland sites developed in tandem remains disputed, however (see next section).

Circa 1800 BC, the Norte Chico civilization began to decline, with more powerful centers appearing to the south and north along the coast, and to the east inside the belt of the Andes. Norte Chico's success at irrigation-based agriculture may have contributed to its being eclipsed. One researcher notes that "when this civilization is in decline, we begin to find extensive canals farther north. People were moving to more fertile ground and taking their knowledge of irrigation with them."^[13] It would be a thousand years before the rise of the next great Peruvian culture, the Chavín.

Maritime coast and agricultural interior[link]

Research into Norte Chico continues, with many unsettled questions. Debate is ongoing over two related questions: the degree to which the flourishing of the Norte Chico was based on maritime food resources, and the exact relationship this implies between the coastal and inland sites.^[14]

Confirmed diet[link]

A broad outline of the Norte Chico diet has been suggested. At Caral, the edible domesticated plants noted by Shady are squash, beans, lucuma, guava, pacay, and camote.^[5] Haas et al. noted the same foods in their survey further north, while adding avocado and achira. There was also a significant seafood component, at both coastal and inland sites. Shady notes that "animal remains are almost exclusively marine" at Caral, including clams and mussels, and large amounts of anchovies and sardines.^[5] That the anchovy fish reached inland is clear,^[11] although Haas suggests that "shellfish [which would include clams and mussels], sea mammals, and seaweed do not appear to have been significant portions of the diet in the inland, non-maritime sites".^[10]

Maritime foundation of Andean civilization[link]

The role of seafood in the Norte Chico diet has aroused debate. Much early fieldwork was done in the region of Aspero on the coast, before the full scope and inter-connectedness of the civilization were realized. In a 1973 paper, Michael E. Moseley confirmed a previously observed lack of ceramics at Aspero, and deduced that "hummocks" on the site constituted the remains of artificial platform mounds. Most provocatively, he contended that a maritime subsistence (seafood) economy had been the basis of the society and its remarkably early flourishing,^[3] a theory later elaborated as a "maritime foundation of Andean civilization" (MFAC).^[15][16] This thesis of a maritime foundation was out of keeping with the general scholarly consensus that the rise of civilization was based on intensive agriculture, particularly of at least one cereal. This had long been seen as essential in the emergence of complex society. Moseley's ideas would be debated and challenged (that maritime remains and their caloric contribution were overestimated, for example)^[17] but have been treated as plausible as late as Mann's summary in 2005.

Concomitant to the maritime subsistence hypothesis, was an implied dominance of sites immediately adjacent to the coast over other centers. This idea was shaken by the realization of the magnitude of Caral, an inland site. Supplemental to Shady's 1997 article dating Caral, a 2001 Science news article emphasized the dominance of agriculture and also suggested that Caral was the oldest urban center in Peru (and the entire Americas). It deprecated the idea that civilization might have begun adjacent to the coast and then moved inland. One archaeologist was quoted as suggesting that "rather than coastal antecedents to monumental inland sites, what we have now are coastal satellite villages to monumental inland sites."^[12]

These assertions were quickly challenged by Sandweiss and Moseley, who observed that Caral, though the largest and most complex Preceramic site, is not the oldest; the importance of agriculture to industry and to augment diet was admitted, while "the formative role of marine resources in early Andean civilization" was still broadly affirmed.^[18] Scholars now agree that the inland sites did have significantly greater populations, and that there were "so many more people along the four rivers than on the shore that they had to have been dominant."^[11] The question is which of the areas developed first and created a template for subsequent development.^[19] Haas rejects suggestions that maritime development at sites immediately adjacent to the coast was initial, pointing to contemporaneous development based on his dating;^[6] Moseley remains convinced that coastal Aspero is the oldest site, and that its maritime subsistence served as a basis for the civilization.^[11][18]

Cotton and politics[link]

Cotton (of the species Gossypium barbadense) likely provided the basis of the dominance of inland over coast (whether development was earlier, later, or contemporaneous).^[10][11] Though not edible, it was the most important product of irrigation in the Norte Chico, vital to the production of fishing nets (that in turn provided maritime resources) as well as to textiles and textile technology. Haas notes that "control over cotton allows a ruling elite to provide the benefit of cloth for clothing, bags, wraps, and adornment."^[10] He is willing to admit to a mutual dependency dilemma: "The prehistoric residents of the Norte Chico needed the fish resources for their protein and the fishermen needed the cotton to make the nets to catch the fish."^[10] Thus, identifying cotton as a vital resource produced in the inland does not by itself resolve the issue of whether the inland centers were a progenitor for the coast or vice versa—Moseley argues, for instance, that successful maritime centers would have moved inland to find cotton.^[11] The exact relationship between food resources and political organization remains unresolved.

Regardless of the status of maritime food resources, Norte Chico's development is still remarkable for the apparent absence of a staple cereal. Maize formed the dietary backbone of later pre-Columbian American civilizations. There is no evidence of its widespread cultivation in Norte Chico. Moseley found a small number of maize cobs in 1973 at Aspero (also seen in site work in the 1940s and 50s)^[3] but has since called the find "problematic".^[18] Other researchers have suggested no evidence of the crop.

Social organization[link]

Government[link]

The Norte Chico chiefdoms were "almost certainly theocratic, though not brutally so," according to Mann. Construction areas show possible evidence of feasting, which would have included music and likely alcohol, suggesting an elite able to both mobilize and reward the population.^[11] The degree of centralized authority is difficult to ascertain, but architectural construction patterns are indicative of an elite that, at least in certain places at certain times, wielded considerable power: while some of the monumental architecture was constructed incrementally, other buildings, such as the two main platform mounds at Caral,^[5] appear to have been constructed in one or two intense construction phases.^[10] As further evidence of centralized control, Haas points to remains of large stone warehouses found at Upaca, on the Pativilca, as emblematic of authorities able to control vital resources such as cotton.^[11]

Haas suggests that the labour mobilization patterns revealed by the archaeological evidence point to a unique emergence of human government, one of two alongside Sumer (or three, if Mesoamerica is included as a separate case). While in other cases, the idea of government would have been borrowed or copied, in this small group, government was invented. Other archaeologists have rejected such claims as hyperbolic.^[11]

In further exploring the basis of possible government, Haas suggests three broad bases of power for early complex societies:

• economic,
• ideology, and
• physical. He finds the first two present in ancient Norte Chico.

Economic[link]

Economic authority would have rested on the control of cotton and edible plants and associated trade relationships, with power centered on the inland sites. Haas tentatively suggests that the scope of this economic power base may have extended widely: there are only two confirmed shore sites in the Norte Chico (Aspero and Bandurria) and possibly two more, but cotton fishing nets and domesticated plants have been found up and down the Peruvian coast. It is possible that the major inland centers of Norte Chico were at the center of a broad regional trade network centered on these resources.^[10] Discover magazine, citing Shady, suggests a rich and varied trade life: "[Caral] exported its own products and those of Aspero to distant communities in exchange for exotic imports: Spondylus shells from the coast of Ecuador, rich dyes from the Andean highlands, hallucinogenic snuff from the Amazon."^[20] (Given the still limited extent of Norte Chico research, such claims should be treated circumspectly.) Other reports on Shady's work indicate Caral traded with communities in the jungle farther inland and, possibly, with people from the mountains.^[21]

Ideology[link]

Leaders' ideological power was based on apparent access to deities and the supernatural.^[10] Evidence regarding Norte Chico religion is limited: an image of the Staff God, a leering figure with a hood and fangs, has been found on a gourd dated to 2250 BC. The Staff God is a major deity of later Andean cultures, and Winifred Creamer suggests the find points to worship of common symbols of gods.^[22][23] As with much other research at Norte Chico, the nature and significance of the find has been disputed by other researchers.^[24]

The act of architectural construction and maintenance may also have been a spiritual or religious experience: a process of communal exaltation and ceremony.^[19] Shady has called Caral "the sacred city" ("La ciudad sagrada"^[4]): socio-economic and political focus was on the temples, which were periodically remodeled, with major burnt offerings associated with the remodeling.^[25]

Physical[link]

Haas notes the absence of any suggestion of physical bases of power, that is, defensive construction. There is no evidence of warfare "of any kind or at any level during the Preceramic Period."^[10] Mutilated bodies, burned buildings, and other tell-tale signs of violence are absent, and settlement patterns are completely non-defensive.^[19] The evidence of the development of complex government in the absence of warfare is in marked contrast to archaeological theory, which suggests that human beings move away from kin-based groups to larger units resembling "states" for mutual defense of often scarce resources. A vital resource was present: arable land generally, and the cotton crop specifically, but the move to greater complexity was apparently not driven by the need for defense or warfare.^[19]

Sites and architecture[link]

Norte Chico sites are notable for exceptional collective density, as well as individual size. Haas argues that the density of sites in such a small area is globally unique for a nascent civilization. During the third millennium BC, Norte Chico may have been the most densely populated area of the world (excepting, possibly, northern China).^[10]

The Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza Valleys each have large clusters of sites, with a single site found on the Huaura River. The ground-breaking work of 1973 at Aspero at the mouth of the Supe Valley suggested a site of approximately 13 hectares (32 acres). Surveying of the midden suggested extensive prehistoric construction activity. Small-scale terracing is noted, along with more sophisticated platform mound masonry. As many as eleven artificial mounds "could be" present. Moseley calls these "Corporate Labor Platforms", given that their size, layout, and construction materials and techniques would have required an organized workforce.^[3]

The survey of the northern rivers found sites between 10 and 100 ha (25 and 250 acres); between one and seven large platform mounds—rectangular, terraced pyramids—were discovered, ranging in size from 3,000 m³ (110,000 cu ft) to over 100,000 m³ (3,500,000 cu ft).^[6] Shady notes that the central zone of Caral, with monumental architecture, covers an area of just over 65 ha. Six platform mounds, numerous smaller mounds, two sunken circular plazas, and a variety of residential architecture were also discovered at this site.^[5]

The monumental architecture was constructed with quarried stone and river cobbles. Using reed "shicra-bags", some of which have been preserved,^[26] laborers would have hauled the material to sites by hand. Roger Atwood of Archaeology magazine describes the process:"Armies of workers would gather a long, durable grass known as shicra in the highlands above the city, tie the grass strands into loosely meshed bags, fill the bags with boulders, and then pack the trenches behind each successive retaining wall of the step pyramids with the stone-filled bags." ^[27]

In this way, the people of Norte Chico achieved formidable architectural success. The largest of the platforms mounds at Caral, the Piramide Mayor, measures 160 by 150 m (520 by 490 ft) and rises 18 m (59 ft) high.^[5] In its summation of the 2001 Shady paper, the BBC suggests workers would have been "paid or compelled" to work on centralized projects of this sort, with dried anchovies possibly serving as a form of currency.^[28] Mann points to "ideology, charisma, and skilfully timed reinforcement" from leaders.^[11]

Development and absent technologies[link]

The presence of quipu tentatively suggests a "proto-writing" system in ancient Norte Chico.

When compared to the common Eurasian models of the development of civilization, Norte Chico's differences are striking. A total lack of ceramics persists across the period. The BBC observes that Norte Chico's people would have roasted their various crops, with no pots to boil them.^[28] The lack of pottery was accompanied by a lack of archaeologically apparent art. In conversation with Mann, Alvaro Ruiz observes: "In the Norte Chico we see almost no visual arts. No sculpture, no carving or bas-relief, almost no painting or drawing—the interiors are completely bare. What we do see are these huge mounds—and textiles."^[11]

While the absence of ceramics appears anomalous, the presence of textiles is intriguing. As quipu (or khipu), string-based recording devices, have been found at Caral, this suggests a writing, or "proto-writing", system at Norte Chico.^[29] (The discovery was reported by Mann in Science in 2005, but has not been formally published or described by Shady.) The exact use of quipu in this and later Andean cultures has been widely debated. Originally it was believed to be simply a mnemonic used to record numeric information, such as a count of items bought and sold. Evidence has emerged that the quipu may also have recorded logographic information in the same way writing does. Research has focused on the much larger sample of a few hundred quipu dating to Inca times; the Norte Chico discovery remains singular and undeciphered.^[30]

Other finds at Norte Chico have proved suggestive. While visual arts appear absent, the people may have played instrumental music: thirty-two flutes, crafted from pelican bone, have been discovered.^[11][20] The leering face of the Staff God is another artifact that awaits explanation. While still fragmentary, such archaeological evidence corresponds to the patterns of later Andean civilization and may indicate that Norte Chico served as a template. Along with the specific finds, Mann highlights "the primacy of exchange over a wide area, the penchant for collective, festive civic work projects, [and] the high valuation of textiles and textile technology" within Norte Chico as patterns that would recur later in the Peruvian cradle of civilization.^[11]

Research controversies[link]

The magnitude of the Norte Chico discovery has brought academic controversy in its wake. The "monumental feud", as described by Archaeology, has included "public insults, a charge of plagiarism, ethics inquiries in both Peru and the United States, and complaints by Peruvian officials to the U.S. government."^[27] The lead author of the seminal paper of April 2001^[5] was Peruvian Ruth Shady, with co-authors Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer, a married United States team; the coauthoring was reportedly suggested by Haas, in the hopes that the involvement of United States researchers would help secure funds for carbon dating as well as future research funding. Later, Shady charged the couple with plagiarism and insufficient attribution, suggesting the pair had received credit for her research, which had been going on since 1994.^[20][31]

At issue is credit for the discovery of the civilization, naming it, and developing the theoretical models to explain it. That Shady was describing a civilization is clear in 1997: ("los albores de la civilización en el Perú."^[4]). While locating it on the Supe River, with Caral at its center, she suggested a larger geographic base for the society:^[32]

In 2004, Haas et al. wrote: "Our recent work in the neighboring Pativilca and Fortaleza has revealed that Caral and Aspero were but two of a much larger number of major Late Archaic sites in the Norte Chico," while only noting Shady in footnotes.^[6] Attribution of this type is what has angered Shady and her supporters. Shady's position has been hampered by a lack of funding for archeological research in her native Peru, as well as the media advantages of North American researchers in disputes of this type.^[21]

Haas and Creamer were cleared of the plagiarism charge by their institutions. The Chicago Field Museum’s science advisory council rebuked Haas for press releases and web pages that gave too little credit to Shady and inflated the couple’s role as discoverers.^[20] The dispute remains heated. Scholars have concerns that it could make it more difficult for United States archaeologists to gain permission to work in Peru.^[27]

See also[link]

• List of Norte Chico sites
• Supe Puerto
• Iperu, tourist information and assistance

Notes and references[link]

Further reading[link]

• Sandweiss, D.H.; Solis, R.S.; Moseley, M.E.; Keeferd, D.K. and Ortloff, C.R. (2009). "Environmental change and economic development in coastal Peru between 5,800 and 3,600 years ago". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106: 1359–1363. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0812645106. 
• Shady, Ruth; Kleihege, Cristopher, eds. (2008). Caral : la primera civilización de América = the first civilization in the Americas. Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres. ISBN 9972-33-792-8. 
• Shady Solís, Ruth (2005). Caral Supe, Perú : the Caral-Supe civilization : 5,000 years of cultural identity in Peru. Lima: Instituto Nacional de Cultura. ISBN 9972-9738-4-0. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Caral-Supe

• Caral-Supe at Google Maps
• Northern Illinois University press kit photos
• Press kit photos and video of Caral

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

Civilization (or civilisation) is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally hierarchical and urbanized. In a classical context, people were called "civilized" to set them apart from barbarians, while in a modern-day context, "civilized peoples" have been contrasted with primitive peoples.

There is a tendency to use the term in a less strict way, to mean approximately the same thing as "culture" and therefore, the term can more broadly refer to any important and clearly defined human society.^{[citation needed]} Still, even when used in this second sense, the word is often restricted to apply only to societies that have attained a particular level of advancement-especially the founding of cities.

The level of advancement of a civilization is often measured by its progress in agriculture, long-distance trade, occupational specialization, a special governing class and urbanism. Aside from these core elements, a civilization is often marked by any combination of a number of secondary elements, including a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and (tort-based) legal systems, characteristic art and architecture, mathematics, enhanced scientific understanding, metallurgy, political structures, and an astronomical understanding.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan, also called the Mosque of Uqba, is the oldest mosque in North Africa and one of the most important monuments of Islamic civilization.[1][2] In addition to its artistic and architectural importance, between the 9th and 11th centuries it was the main centre of culture and education in all of North Africa.[3] The Great Mosque of Kairouan is located in the World Heritage city of Kairouan in Tunisia.

The ancient city of Mohenjo-daro, built around 2600 BCE by the Ancient Indus valley civilization, spanning Pakistan, India and Afghanistan is known to be one of the world's earliest cities.

The Acropolis, directly influencing architecture and engineering in Western, Islamic, and Eastern civilizations up to the present day, 2400 years after construction.

Etymology[link]

The Roman Forum, the political, economic, cultural, and religious center of the Ancient Rome civilization, during the Republic and later Empire, its ruins still visible today in modern-day Rome.

The Great Wall of China

The word civilization comes from the Latin civilis, meaning civil, related to the Latin civis, meaning citizen, and civitas, meaning city or city-state.^[4]

In the sixth century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian oversaw the consolidation of Roman civil law. The resulting collection is called the Corpus Juris Civilis. In the 11th century, professors at the University of Bologna, Western Europe's first university, rediscovered the Corpus Juris Civilis, and its influence began to be felt across Europe. In 1388, the word civil appeared in English meaning "of or related to citizens."^[5] In 1704, civilization was used to mean "a law which makes a criminal process into a civil case." Civilization was not used in its modern sense to mean "the opposite of barbarism"—as contrasted to civility, meaning politeness or civil virtue—until the second half of the 18th century.

According to Emile Benveniste (1954^[6]), the earliest written occurrence in English of civilisation in its modern sense may be found in Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767 - p. 2): "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation."

It should be noted that this usage incorporates the concept of superiority and maturity of "civilized" existence, as contrasted to "rudeness", which is used to denote coarseness, as in a lack of refinement or "civility."

Before Benveniste's inquiries, the New English Dictionary quoted James Boswell's conversation with Samuel Johnson concerning the inclusion of Civilization in Johnson's dictionary:

On Monday, March 23 (1772), I found him busy, preparing a fourth edition of his folio Dictionary... He would not admit civilization, but only civility. With great deference to him I thought civilization, from to civilize, better in the sense opposed to barbarity than civility, as it is better to have a distinct word for each sense, than one word with two senses, which civility is, in his way of using it.

Benveniste demonstrated that previous occurrences could be found, which explained the quick adoption of Johnson's definition. In 1775 the dictionary of Ast defined civilization as "the state of being civilized; the act of civilizing",^[6] and the term was frequently used by Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776).^[6] Beside Smith and Ferguson, John Millar also used it in 1771 in his Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society.^[6]

The history of the word in English appears to be connected with the parallel development in French, which may be the original source. As the first occurrence of civilization in French was found by Benveniste in the Marquis de Mirabeau's L'Ami des hommes ou traité de la population (written in 1756 but published in 1757), Benveniste's query was to know if the English word derived from the French, or if both evolved independently — a question which needed more research. According to him, the word civilization may in fact have been used by Ferguson as soon as 1759.^[6]

Furthermore, Benveniste notes that, contrasted to civility, a static term, civilization conveys a sense of dynamism. He thus writes that:

It was not only a historical view of society; it was also an optimist and resolutely non theological interpretation of its evolution which asserted itself, sometimes at the insu of those who proclaimed it, and even if some of them, and first of all Mirabeau, still counted religion as the first factor of 'civilization.^[6][7]

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, both during the French revolution, and in English, "civilization" was referred to in the singular, never the plural, because it referred to the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French.^[8] More recently "civilizations" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader term "cultures" in both popular and academic circles.^[9] However, the concepts of civilization and culture are not always considered interchangeable. For example, a small nomadic tribe may be judged not to have a civilization, but it would surely be judged to have a culture (defined as "the arts, customs, habits... beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life").

Civilization is not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization stems from the writings of Rousseau, and particularly his work concerning education, Emile. In this perspective, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accordance with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original prediscursive or prerational natural unity". (See noble savage.) From this notion, a new approach was developed especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder, and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This sees cultures (plural) as natural organisms which are not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts" but rather a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful concerning material progress, is seen as un-natural, and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice.^[8] During World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this approach to civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.^[10]

In his book The Philosophy of Civilization, Albert Schweitzer outlined the idea that there are dual opinions within society: one regarding civilization as purely material and another regarding civilization as both ethical and material. He stated that the current world crisis was, then in 1923, due to a humanity having lost the ethical conception of civilization. In this same work, he defined civilization, saying that it "is 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."

Characteristics[link]

26th century BCE Sumerian cuneiform script in Sumerian language, listing gifts to the high priestess of Adab on the occasion of her election. One of the earliest examples of human writing.

Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.^[11] 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.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation. Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor 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 labor predates plant and animal domestication.^[12]

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes simply defined as "'living in cities'".^[13] Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

"No one in the history of civilization has shaped our understanding of science and natural philosophy more than the great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384-322 BCE), who exerted a profound and pervasive influence for more than two thousand years" —Gary B. Ferngren^[14]

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state.^[15] State societies are more stratified^[16] 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:^{[citation needed]}

• Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.^[17]
• Horticultural/pastoral 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 governments.^[18]

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 civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions. To oversimplify, 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 fairly.

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."^[19] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, 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. The Inca civilization of the Andes did not use writing at all, yet it still functioned as a society.

Aided by their division of labor 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.

Through history, successful civilizations have spread, taking over more and more territory, and assimilating more and more previously-uncivilized people. Nevertheless, some tribes or people remain uncivilized even to this day. These cultures are called by some "primitive," a term that is regarded by others as pejorative. "Primitive" implies in some way that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), that it has not changed since the dawn of humanity, though this has been demonstrated not to be true. Specifically, as all of today's cultures are contemporaries, today's so-called primitive cultures are in no way antecedent to those we consider civilized. Many anthropologists use the term "non-literate" to describe these peoples.

Civilization has been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by introducing agriculture and writing to non-literate peoples. Some non-civilized people may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour. But civilization is also spread by the technical, material and social dominance that civilization engenders.

Cultural identity[link]

"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 literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with 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 being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam). 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.

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler,^[20] uses the German word "Kultur," "culture," for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believes 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."^[20]

This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A 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. Huntington defines 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." Huntington's theories about civilizations are discussed below.^[21]

Complex systems[link]

Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system, i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analyzed 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 complex social system, and a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard against superficial but 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 the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman 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 the ancient world. During the Uruk period Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan.^[22] Resin found later in the Royal Tombs of Ur it is 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 as globalization. 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 Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE.^[23] 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 the Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.

Future[link]

Huntington's map of world civilizations (1996).

Political scientist Samuel Huntington^[24] has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said, Muhammed Asadi and Amartya Sen.^[25] Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and 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.^[26] In Identity and Violence Sen 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.

Some environmental scientists see the world entering a Planetary Phase of Civilization, characterized by a shift away from independent, disconnected nation-states to a world of increased global connectivity with worldwide institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness.^[27][28] In an attempt to better understand what a Planetary Phase of Civilization might look like in the current context of declining natural resources and increasing consumption, the Global scenario group used scenario analysis to arrive at three archetypal futures: Barbarization, in which increasing conflicts result in either a fortress world or complete societal breakdown; Conventional Worlds, in which market forces or Policy reform slowly precipitate more sustainable practices; and a Great Transition, in which either the sum of fragmented Eco-Communalism movements add up to a sustainable world or globally coordinated efforts and initiatives result in a new sustainability paradigm.^[29]

Author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is intrinsically directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in a harmful and destructive fashion.^[30]

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist (see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization).

Fall of civilizations[link]

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

• Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddimah influenced theories of the analysis, growth and decline of the Islamic civilization. He suggested repeated invasions from nomadic peoples limited development and led to social collapse.
• Edward Gibbon's work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was 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 of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 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.[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173–174.-Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.--Part VI. General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West.]

• Theodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome (Mommsen)", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."
• Oswald Spengler, in his "Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch'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 in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
• Arnold J. Toynbee in his "A Study of History" suggested 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 cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
• Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, 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 Diamond in his 2005 book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.
• Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest 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 sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, 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 increasing overpopulation leads 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 (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).
• Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians^[31] 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 much 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 the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others.
• Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization,^[32] shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
• Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization,^[33] 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 to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society."^[34]
• Thomas Homer-Dixon in "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization", considers that the fall in the energy 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 they will collapse....

History[link]

Early civilizations[link]

Map of the world showing approximate centers of origin of agriculture and its spread in prehistory: the Fertile Crescent (11,000 BP), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9000 BP) and the New Guinea Highlands (9000–6000 BP), Central Mexico (5000–4000 BP), Northern South America (5000–4000 BP), sub-Saharan Africa (5000–4000 BP, exact location unknown), eastern USA (4000–3000 BP).^[35]

The process of sedentarization is first thought to have occurred around 12,000 BCE in the Levant region of southwest Asia though other regions around the world soon followed. The emergence of civilization is generally associated with the Neolithic, or Agricultural Revolution, which occurred in various locations between 8,000 and 5,000 BCE, specifically in southwestern/southern Asia, northern/central Africa and Central America.^[36] This revolution marked the beginning of stable agriculture and animal domestication which enabled economies and cities to develop.

The following articles discuss the development of major early civilizations.

• Old Stone Age
• New Stone Age
• Bronze Age India
  • Indus Valley Civilization
• Ancient Near East
  • Mesopotamia
  • Levant / Canaan
  • Bronze Age Anatolia / Aegean
• Bronze Age Europe
• Bronze Age China

• Africa
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Ancient Somalia
  • Kush
  • Axum

• Pre-Columbian Americas
  • Norte Chico / Caral
  • Olmec
  • Zapotec civilization

Antiquity (Axial Age)[link]

Karl Jaspers, the German historical philosopher, proposed that the ancient civilizations were affected greatly by an Axial Age in the period between 800 BCE–200 BCE during which a series of male sages, prophets, religious reformers and philosophers, from China, India, Iran, Israel and Greece, changed the direction of civilizations.^[37] William H. McNeill proposed that this period of history was one in which culture contact between previously separate civilizations saw the "closure of the oecumene", and led to accelerated social change from China to the Mediterranean, associated with the spread of coinage, larger empires and new religions. This view has recently been championed by Christopher Chase-Dunn and other world systems theorists.

• Mediterranean civilizations of the Classical Period
  • Ancient Greece
  • Ancient Rome
  • Hellenistic civilization
• Middle East
  • Persia since the Achaemenids
  • Second Temple Judaism
• Ancient India
• Ancient China (Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty)
• Ancient Nomads (Xiongnu, Huns, Kok Turk Empire)

Medieval to Early Modern[link]