civilization

　 　 　

WordNet

1. the social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organization (同)civilisation
2. a society in an advanced state of social development (e.g., with complex legal and political and religious organizations); "the people slowly progressed from barbarism to civilization" (同)civilisation
3. the Bronze Age civilization on the Cyclades islands in the southern Aegean Sea that flourished 3000-1100 BC (同)Cycladic civilisation, Cycladic culture, Cyclades
4. the bronze-age culture of mainland Greece that flourished 2500-1100 BC (同)Helladic civilisation, Helladic culture
5. the late bronze-age culture of Mycenae that flourished 1400-1100 BC (同)Mycenaean civilisation, Mycenaean culture
6. the bronze-age culture of Crete that flourished 3000-1100 BC (同)Minoan civilisation, Minoan culture
7. the bronze-age culture of the Indus valley that flourished from about 2600-1750 BC

PrepTutorEJDIC

1. 〈U〉〈C〉(物質的・社会的・科学的・政治的に高度な)『文明』;(特定の地域・国民・時代に発達した)『文明』[様式]/《集合的に》文明世界;文明人/〈U〉(…の)文明化,開化《+『of』+『名』》

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出典(authority):フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』「2016/08/28 01:37:52」(JST)

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シヴィライゼーション
クローンであるFreecivのゲーム画面
ジャンル	ターン制ストラテジー
発売元	マイクロプローズ他
主な製作者	シド・マイヤー ブライアン・レイノルズ ソーレン・ジョンソン、他
1作目	Civilization （1982年）
最新作	Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World （2013年7月）

『シヴィライゼーション』(Civilization) は、文明をモチーフとしたターン制のシミュレーションゲーム（ストラテジーゲーム）シリーズ。ここでは派生版、オープンソースのクローンも合わせて記述する。

概要

人類文明の歴史と発展をテーマにしたターンベースのストラテジーゲームである。一手一手をプレイヤーが、じっくりと考えてゲームを進めることができる。ゲーム内容は、いわゆる戦争ゲームではなく、文明の発展や人類史そのものを扱っている。そのためゲーム内容は広範で、国土の整備や技術開発、そして何より他国との外交関係が、極めて重要な要素となる。単純に数値の大きさや強さのみを求めるのではなく、ゲーム内で有機的に繰り広げられる国際秩序を注視し、常に一手先を読んだ総合戦略が求められる。

1991年にマイクロプローズ社より発売された Sid Meier's Civilization のシリーズが有名だが、それ以外にも複数のメーカーから多数の Civilization の名を冠する作品が発売されている。2011年3月現在では、全世界で累計1000万本以上が販売されている。

シリーズとシド・マイヤーの関わり

シリーズのタイトルに冠されているシド・マイヤー (Sid Meier) の名前だが、彼が実際に制作に関わったのは初代Civilizationと2008年に家庭用ゲーム機向きに展開されたCivilization Revolutionの2作のみである。Civilization II以降の作品では、監修のみを担当し、実際の制作には関わっていない。しかし、主にマーケティング上の理由により彼の名前が冠されている。海外ゲーム情報が乏しかった1990年代の日本では、このような事情がほとんど伝わらず、シリーズ全てを実際にシド・マイヤー本人が制作していると勘違いされることも多かった。

シリーズ第2作のCivilization IIや、外伝のアルファケンタウリを担当したブライアン・レイノルズは、後に独立しBig Huge GamesでRise of Nationsを担当。また、シリーズ第4作のCivilization IVを担当したソーレン・ジョンソンは、その後、エレクトロニックアーツでウィル・ライトの新作Sporeの制作に携わっている。

プラットフォーム

初代Civilizationは、MS-DOSベースのIBM互換機向けに発売された。以後、Windows3.1に対応したCivilization II、Windows95以降の環境に対応したアルファケンタウリとCivilization III。Civilization IVおよび最新作であるCivilization Vは、Windows XP以降の環境に対応するなど、主にパソコン用ゲームとして開発販売されている。

日本国内では98版が1992年に発売、その後Windows、Macintoshや各種ゲーム機用に日本語版が発売されている。

2009年に各種プラットホーム向けに発売されたCivilization Revolutionは、翌年ニンテンドーDS用のものがiPhone/iPad用に移植された。

Civilization Vについては、2014年より、LinuxとLinuxをベースにしたSteam OSでも、サポートされるようになった。ただし、Linuxについては、すべてのディストリビューションがサポートされているわけではなく、一部のディストリビューションをテストしているだけである。

また、有志によりオープンソースで開発されているFreeCivなどのクローンも存在する。

特徴

シヴィライゼーションは、もともと一人用のゲームである。後に多人数対戦用のCivNetが発売され、続編には当初からその機能が組み込まれている。プレイヤーは、ある文明の支配者として、1つか2つの植民者 (Settler) ユニットから帝国の建設を始める（IIIでは、労働者 (Worker) ユニットも与えられる）。2つから6つの競争相手となる文明を設定することができる。ゲームはターン制であり、細かく行動を決めていく必要がある。紀元前4000年からゲームは始まり、21世紀にゲームは終了する。その間にユニットを使い、新しい都市を作り、大地を均し、鉱山を開発し、道、そして後には鉄道を建設することができる。

探検、戦争、外交の3つは重要な戦略ではあるが、より細かい戦略も重視される。どの都市でどのユニットを生産し、どこに新しい都市を作るか、それにどのように最大の発展をするために都市の周囲を開発していくかもプレイヤーの手にゆだねられる。時にはバーバリアンと呼ばれるどの文明にも属さないユニットが都市を襲撃することもある（バーバリアンは、全ての土地が発見された後には登場しない）。

ゲームを始める前に、どの文明を選ぶか決める。それぞれの文明には得意、不得手とする分野があるが、文明の真価はプレイヤーではなく、コンピューターが動かす時により強く発揮され、文明ごとに戦略方針が変わってくることに表れる。例えばアステカ文明は、強硬な拡張主義を取り、外交より戦争を好む。他に、アメリカやモンゴル、ローマ等の文明を選択することができ、それぞれの文明を代表する歴史的指導者によって指揮される。

時代が進むにつれ、新しい技術が開発される。序盤は、陶芸や車輪、それに文字といった技術しか開発できないが、終盤には核技術や宇宙飛行なども開発できるようになる。最初に有効な技術を手に入れることは大きな優位をもたらす。技術の開発により、新しいユニットの生産や都市を発展させる技術の利用、それにその技術から派生する新たな技術の開発ができるようになる。新しい技術はそれまでに獲得された1つ、または複数の技術の組み合わせを元に達成される。車輪の技術を開発する事によりチャリオット・ユニットを生産できるようになり、陶芸の開発終了により、貯蔵用陶器を手に入れたことで穀物貯蔵所を利用できる。このように技術を開発するごとにさらに他の技術が開発できるようになることを、枝分かれする木に例え「テクノロジーツリー」と呼ぶことがある。これ以後、他のゲームでもこのアイデアは利用された（テクノロジー・ツリーのアイデアは最初イギリスで発表され、アメリカではアバロン・ヒル社から発売された同題の多人数ボードゲームに由来する）。

プレイヤーの最終的な目的は武力による征服だけではない。宇宙船を開発し、最初にほかの惑星（アルファ・ケンタウリ）に移住できるかを競うこともできる。国連事務総長選挙で勝てば平和的勝利となる。シリーズが進むにつれ、文化勝利、経済的勝利というルールも追加された。これらは新しいゲームをスタートした時に勝利条件として設定され、いずれかを満たせばその時点で勝利したことになるし、期限までプレイを続けなくてもかまわない（その場合点数で順位がつけられる）。プレイヤーは様々な戦略、プレイスタイルでゲームに挑むことができる。

ボードゲーム版

Civilization（文明の曙）

1982年にアバロンヒルより発売。ボードゲーム。後にホビージャパンから『文明の曙』として日本語解説書つきで発売された。

Advanced Civilization（アドヴァンスト シヴィライゼーション 文明の曙）

1991年にアバロンヒルより発売。ボードゲーム。1995年に Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization のタイトルでコンピューターゲーム化もされた。

ゲームソフト版

Sid Meier's Civilization

1991年にマイクロプローズより発売。ゲームデザイナーのシド・マイヤーによりデザインされた、最初のシヴィライゼーションである。誤解されることが多いが、上述したようにアバロン・ヒル社のボードゲームが存在するため、一連のゲームのオリジナルアイデアそのものはシド・マイヤーの発案ではない。ただし、シド・マイヤーは後のインタビューで「ボードゲームの話を聞いたことはあったが、ゲームデザインを始める前にプレイしたことはない」と語っている（ただし、ゲーム内容はボードゲーム版と驚くほど似通っている）。

1992年に98版、1994年にSFC版『シヴィライゼーション 世界七大文明』（アスミック）、1996年にはPS版･SS版『シヴィライゼーション新世界七大文明』（アスミック・エース エンタテインメント）も発売されている。

Sid Meier's Civilization II

1996年にマイクロプローズより発売。メディアクエストよりWindows3.1用の日本語版が発売されている。ゲームデザインは、ブライアン・レイノルズが担当し、本作よりシド・マイヤー自身は、直接の制作には関わっていない。ゲームは、マップがクォータービュー表示に変更されるなど、画面描写が大幅に改善された。さらにゲームバランスの改善、テクノロジーやユニットが大幅に追加されるなど、正統的な進化を遂げている。数百万本を売り上げる人気作となったが、マイクロプローズ社は当初、この作品にほとんど期待をかけておらず、あくまでも前作ファン向けのマイナー作品として扱っていたため、ゲーム発売前にほとんど販促プロモーションが行われなかったという、異例の販売経歴を持っている。 1998年にPS版『シヴィライゼーションII』 が､ヒューマンから発売されている｡

拡張パック

• Civilization II：Gold Edition
• Civilization II：Test of Time

Civilization: Call to Power (CTP)

1999年にアクティビジョンより発売。シド・マイヤーは関わっていない。アバロン・ヒルよりCivilizationに関するライセンスを受けたため、マイクロプロースとの裁判となった。裁判の結果、マイクロプロースよりライセンスを受けることになった。つまり、サブライセンス作品であり、シリーズ名を冠しているものの、公式にはCivillizationには含まれない。同年にサイバーフロントより日本語版が発売されている。Linux版も存在する。

本家Civilizationと異なり、近未来の技術が大きく拡張されていた。例えば、海底や宇宙空間にも都市を作ることができた。奴隷商人を使ってライバル文明から人々を誘拐し自文明の生産力に割り当てることや、七不思議、奴隷解放運動によって奴隷制度を無効化してライバル文明を陥れること、支店ユニットによってライバル文明の都市にフランチャイズして戦争をせずに生産力をライバル文明から詐取することや、それに対抗して弁護士で支店を提訴するという面白いアイデアが大量に導入された。エコテロリスト、エコレンジャーという環境保護を目的とした、ナノテクノロジーによるテロ活動を行うユニットも生産できるようになった。政治体制には、圧政、ファシズム、神権政治、多国籍企業（企業共同体）、テクノクラシー（技術至上主義）、サイバー民主主義、エコトピアが追加された。

また、ゲームシステム上の特徴として、「インフラ」の導入により土地改善の作業が大幅に軽減されたことや、交易品の導入により交易路の維持が経済戦略上の重要な鍵になったことが挙げられる。

今作では、地球外での勝利を求める場合の選択肢は、ワームホールを発見し、人工的に誕生させたエイリアンを別の宇宙に送り出すことである。

Call to Power II (CTP2)

2000年11月にアクティビジョンより発売。ライセンス問題を解決するため、Civillizationの冠は無くなっている。2001年にメディアクエストより日本語版が発売された。日本語版に関しては、移植元が変更されたことにより、前作でのような誤訳は無い。

概ね、前作のアレンジバージョンと言って良い。最終目的が前作CTPと異なり、地球外探査の概念が無く、地球のリソースを自由に操ることが出来る、ガイアコントローラの開発である（ちなみに、前作CTPでは、今作のガイアコントローラの概念に含まれる要素は、単なる技術ツリーや七不思議に含まれており、ある意味、目的が後退している）。

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

2000年にエレクトロニック・アーツより発売。シド・マイヤーらが新たに設立したフィラクシス・ゲームズが開発元となっており、以降の作品も同社により開発されている。同年に日本語版も発売されている。

Civilizationの実質的な続編。シリーズの最終目標の一つである、アルファケンタウリへの植民後の世界を舞台とした作品で、各文明の指導者、技術ツリーなどがSF的な内容になっている。ゼロから様々なユニットを自由に設計できる柔軟なカスタマイズ性や国境線の導入に始まり、各勢力の首脳に強い個性が与えられ、外交に様々な選択肢が追加されるなど、後のシリーズ発展の基盤となる多くのアイデアが示されている。

ゲームデザインは、前作にあたるCivilization IIに引き続き、ブライアン・レイノルが担当。彼は、ゲーム内への数々の革新的要素を導入によって、その評価を不動の物としたが、続編にあたるCivilization IIIの開発中に開発メンバーと共にフィラクシス社を退社。Big Huge Games社を設立し、Rise of Nationsの開発を担当した。

拡張パック

• Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire (SMAX)

Sid Meier's Civilization III

2001年にインフォグラムより発売。最も大きな要素は、Windows95以降のWindowsプラットフォームへの正式対応で、加えてCivilizationIIやアルファケンタウリで示された、新要素の取り込みが主な変更点となっている。日本国外ではMac OS X版も発売されている。日本では、サイバーフロントより日本語版が発売され、全世界で300万本以上の売り上げを達成した。

拡張パック

• Sid Meier's Civilization III：Play the World (PTW)
• Sid Meier's Civilization III：Conquests (C3C)

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

2005年10月24日に2K GamesよりWindows用のPCゲームとして発売。2006年6月にはMac OS X版も発売されている。また、同年6月17日にはサイバーフロントより日本語版が発売されている。2007年7月時点で、全世界で150万本以上の売り上げを達成している。画面がフル3Dへと一新され、操作性が大幅に向上した。さらに、ゲームシステムが大きく変更され、従来作でプレイヤーの手を煩わせていた公害の除去や汚職の管理といった要素が削除され、プレイアビリティが高まった。また、AI指導者達の振る舞いも大きく改良された。

ゲームの発売から6年後、オープニングテーマ曲である『Baba Yetu』が、第53回グラミー賞の「Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist」部門を受賞した。作曲者のクリストファー・ティンが2010年に発売したアルバムに『Baba Yetu』が収録されていたことから改めて評価されたもので、ゲーム音楽としては史上初の受賞である。。

拡張パック

• Sid Meier's Civilization IV：Warlords
• Sid Meier's Civilization IV：Beyond the Sword

Sid Meier's Civilization Chronicles

2006年発売（英語版のみ）。“Sid Meier's Civilization”から“Civilization IV”までのセット（“Alpha Centauri”を除く）と、96ページに渡る小冊子 (Chronicles)、カードゲーム、ビデオDVD、ポスター、デスクトップ用の壁紙、MP3ファイル等のボーナスアイテムを加えたコレクター向けのボックスセットである。

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution

2008年6月に2K Gamesより北米・欧州・豪州でPLAYSTATION 3・Xbox 360で発売された、家庭用ゲーム機向けに開発された初めてのシヴィライゼーション。
インターネット対戦を前提とした設計だがシングルプレイも可能である。オンライン対戦は1ゲームのプレイ時間が平均3時間から平均1時間に短縮されている。
システムが他シリーズに比べて大幅に簡略化されユニットの種類が少なく、小さめのMAP構成にくわえて都市には衛生度・幸福度・飢餓・交易路といった要素も存在しない上に破産もないため管理の手間（防衛等）さえ惜しまなければ都市をあちこちに建てることで大幅に優位にたてる。
一方で同じユニットを3つ重ねることで「軍団」に編成し直し攻撃力・防御力を3倍にするといった独自のシステムが搭載され下位ユニットでも軍団にすることで上位ユニット単体にも上回る強さを発揮する。
2008年12月25日にサイバーフロントよりPLAYSTATION 3・XBOX 360の日本語版が、翌2009年1月29日にニンテンドーDS版が発売された。ニンテンドーDS版はハード性能からMAP表示が2Dであったり、CPU文明が巨大化すると数十秒待たされる、またユニットが売却できないなどいくつか仕様が異なる。また、2010年1月14日に2K GamesよりiPhone・iPod Touch・iPad対応の日本語版が発売された。

Sid Meier's Civilization IV Colonization

2009年3月27日に2K Gamesより発売。1994年に発売されたSid Meier's Colonizationを、Civilization IVのゲームエンジンを使ってリメイクした作品である。Civilization IVの拡張パックではなく、独立した単体作品としてリリースされている。ゲームの舞台は、16世紀のアメリカ新大陸であり、イギリス、フランス、スペイン、オランダといった列強諸国による、新大陸への入植競争とアメリカ合衆国の独立をテーマとしている。

Sid Meier's Civilization V

2010年9月21日に2K Gamesより英語版が北米で、9月24日に欧州でそれぞれ発売された。日本語版の発売は、2010年10月29日となっている。Civilization IVから、さらなるグラフィック面での進化に加えて、プレイヤーが煩わしさを感じる要素を整理再編し、より快適なプレイを実現する方向へとデザインが指向されている。それに基づいてスタック制の廃止など戦争に関する多くの変更が導入されたが、一方で外交や経済政策は簡略化された。そのため、IVとのプレイ感覚の違いから賛否両論がある。拡張版として、2012年6月23日に「Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings」が、2013年7月に「Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World」がそれぞれ発売され、当初単純化されていたゲーム性はある程度複雑化されている。

Civilization World (CivWorld)

Facebook上でのブラウザゲームとして提供されているバージョン。2011年7月5日よりオープンβテストが開始されたが、2013年5月に運営終了となり、2014年現在は後継製品としてiOSで展開中のCivilization Revolutionへ誘導される。

Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution 2

2014年に2K Gamesより発売。Revolutionの改良版だが、iOS/Android版向けのみが提供されている。

シヴィライゼーション レボリューション2+

2015年12月3日に2K Gamesより発売。上記の「Revolution 2」を基にPlayStation Vita用に改良・追加されたもの。

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth

2014年に2K Gamesより発売。SMACの精神的続編であり、同様に地球を脱出した後の、新しい惑星を舞台としたSF的な作品となっている。

また2015年3月には、同様にCivilizationのエンジンを用いた、世界観の近いSid Meier's Starshipsもリリースされている。

その他

他にシリーズ作品としては異色のMMORPGであるCivilization Onlineがある。2K GamesとXL Gamesによって共同開発されておりベータテストが行われている。

Sid Meierの名前を冠した最新作としては2016年10月に発売予定のSid Meier's Civilization VI (Civ6) がある。新たに協力プレイモードや新チュートリアルシステムなどが盛り込まれる予定。

Civilizationを模したクローンゲーム

Freeciv

詳細は「Freeciv」を参照

FreecivはCivilizationを模したクローンゲームの一つ。GPLのソフトウェアとして開発されている。Windows、Mac OS X、Linux対応。

C-evo

C-evoはCivilizationを模したクローンゲームの一つ。パブリックドメインのソフトウェアとして開発されている。

FreeCol

FreeColはColonization(1994年版)を模したクローンゲームの一つ。GPLのソフトウェアとして開発されている。Windows、Mac OS X、Linux対応。

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This article is about human society. For other uses, see Civilization (disambiguation).

Ancient Egypt is a canonical example of an early culture considered a civilization.

A civilization (US) or civilisation (UK) is any complex society characterized by urban development, social stratification, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment by a cultural elite. Civilizations are intimately associated with and often further defined by other socio-politico-economic characteristics, including centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming as an agricultural practice, and expansionism.

Historically, a civilization was a so-called "advanced" culture in contrast to more supposedly primitive cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, egalitarian horticultural subsistence neolithic societies or hunter-gatherers. As an uncountable noun, civilization also refers to the process of a society developing into a centralized, urbanized, stratified structure.

Civilizations are organized in densely populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite. The earlier neolithic technology and lifestyle was established first in the Middle East (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), and later in the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China (for example the Pengtoushan culture from 7,500 BCE), and later spread. Similar pre-civilised "neolithic revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in such places as northwestern South America (the Norte Chico civilization) and Mesoamerica. These were among the six civilizations worldwide that arose independently. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE, with civilisations developing from 6,500 years ago. This area has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy and agriculture."

The civilised urban revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentarism, the domestication of grains and animals and the development lifestyles which allowed economies of scale and the accumulation of surplus production by certain social sectors. The transition from "complex cultures" to "civilisations", while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolised by an elite ruling class who practiced human sacrifice.

Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitist Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various "cradles" from around 3300 BCE. Chalcolithic civilizations, as defined above, also developed in Pre-Columbian Americas and, despite an early start in Egypt, Axum and Kush, much later in Iron Age sub-Saharan Africa. The Bronze Age collapse was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in the Axial Age transition to Classical civilization. A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in Western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world, incorporating earlier cultures into the industrial and technological civilisation of the present.

History of the concept

The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé (civilized), from Latin civilis (civil), related to civis (citizen) and civitas (city). The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period. In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "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."

Adjectives like civility developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun civilisation, meaning "civilized condition," came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation."" The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French revolution, civilization was said singular, never plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of civilizations as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century, but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of ethnography). Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization," which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron.

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord 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, 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 as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts" but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit." Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.

Characteristics

"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 B.C.), who exerted a profound and pervasive influence for more than two thousand years" —Gary B. Ferngren

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 civilisations.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Grain farms can result in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilisation, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilisations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare. 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 soldiers, 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.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes simply 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/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.

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. 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. From the days of the earliest monetarised civilisations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems have benefited the social and political elites.

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, 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 but it uses a complex recording system consisting of cords and nodes instead: the "Quipus", and it still functioned as a civilised 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. Anthropologists today 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.

Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as opposed to trade or manufacturing capacities, the territorial extensions of its power, the complexity of its division of labor, 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.

Traditionally, polities that managed to achieve notable military, ideological and economic power defined themselves as "civilized" as opposed to other societies or human grouping which lay outside their sphere of influence, calling the latter barbarians, savages, and primitives, while in a modern-day context, "civilized people" have been contrasted with indigenous people or tribal societies.

Cultural identity

Further information: Cultural area

"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 a state-based decision making apparatus, a literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs of education, coercion and control associated with maintaining the elite.

B.C world civilizations according to Huntington

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, 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."

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.

Complex systems

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. 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. 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.

History

Development of theories on the origins of civilization

Historically civilizations were assumed by writers such as Aristotle to be the natural state of humanity, so no origin for the Greek polis was considered to be needed. The Sumerian King List for instance, sees the origin of their civilization as descending from heaven. However the great age of maritime discovery exposed the states of Western Europe to hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural cultures that were not civilized. To explain the differences observed, early theorists turned to racist theories of cultural superiority, theories of geographic determinism, or accidents of culture. After the second world war these theories were rejected on various grounds, and other explanations sought. Four schools have developed in the modern period.

1. Theories of voluntary development
2. Theories of coercive militarism
3. Carniero's theory of environmental circumscription
4. Claesson's Complex Interaction Model (CIM)

Early civilizations

Further information: Prehistory and Cradle of Civilization

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).

The Neolithic Era and the transition to Civilisation

Main article: Neolithic

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. At first the Neolithic was associated with shifting subsistence cultivation, where continuous farming led to the depletion of soil fertility resulting in the requirement to cultivate fields further and further removed from the settlement, eventually compelling the settlement itself to move. In major semi-arid river valleys, annual flooding renewed soil fertility every year, with the result that population densities could rise significantly. This encouraged a "secondary products revolution" where domesticated animals became useful for more than meat production; being used also for milk, wool, manure and animal traction of ploughs and carts, a development which spread through the Eurasian Oecumene. The 8.2 Kiloyear Arid Event and the 5.9 Kiloyear Interpluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread of deserts. This climate change shifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities, which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the appearance of walled cities, associated with the first civilisations. This "urban revolution" marked the beginning of the accumulation of transferrable surpluses which enabled economies and cities to develop. It was associated with the state monopoly of violence, the appearance of a soldier class and endemic warfare, rapid development of hierarchies, the appearance of human sacrifice and a fall in the status of women

• Shulaveri-Shomu culture
• Neolithic Europe
  • Vinča culture
  • Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
• Neolithic China

The Bronze Age

Main article: Bronze Age

• Africa
  • Ancient Ethiopia (Dʿmt)
  • Ancient Somalia (Punt)
• Americas
  • Pre-Columbian Americas
    • Norte Chico / Caral
    • Olmec
    • Zapotec civilization
• Asia
  • Ancient Near East
    • Hayasa-Azzi
    • Mesopotamia (Assyria)
    • Levant / Canaan
    • Bronze Age Anatolia / Aegean
  • Bronze Age China
    • Erlitou culture / Xia dynasty
    • Shang dynasty
    • Western Zhou dynasty
  • Bronze Age South Asia
    • Indus Valley Civilization
• Europe
  • Aegean Civilizations
    • Minoan Civilization
    • Mycenaean Greece
    • Nuragic civilization

The Iron Age

Main article: Iron Age

The Iron Age is the period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles. The Iron Age as an archaeological term indicates the condition as to civilization and culture of a people using iron as the material for their cutting tools and weapons. The Iron Age is the third principal period of the three-age system created by Christian Thomsen (1788–1865) for classifying ancient societies and prehistoric stages of progress.

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. William Hardy 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.

• Africa
  • Kush
  • Axum
  • Nok
  • Igbo-Ukwu
• East Asia civilizations
  • Eastern Zhou dynasty (Spring and Autumn period, Warring States period)
• Eurasian civilizations
  • Ancient Nomads, Scythia, (Xiongnu, Huns, Kok Turk Empire)
  • Celts
  • Nairi
  • Urartu
• Mediterranean civilizations of the Classical Period
  • Ancient Phoenicia
  • Ancient Greece
  • Ancient Carthage (Phoenician Colony)
  • Ancient Rome
  • Etruscans
  • Hellenistic civilization
  • Illyrians
  • Iberians
• Middle Eastern civilizations
  • Ancient Israel
  • Neo-Assyrian Empire
  • Persia since the Achaemenids
• South Asian civilizations
  • Vedic India

Medieval to Early Modern

Further information: Middle Ages and Early Modern period

Further information: Hinduism, Christianization, Spread of Buddhism, Spread of Islam, and Age of Discovery

The spread of the Higher Religions, beginning with Zoroastrianism, Confucianism and Buddhism was linked to the developments of the Axial Age. Principal amongst this was the creation of large militaristic territorial states, which saw an increase in the state as a powerful unit monopolising the use of violence. It was also linked with the spread of coinage and monetary economies, which had the effect of dissolving the previous local community traditions. The rise of the confessional religious brought the ability to unify larger states than had existed previously.

• Christendom
  • Western Christianity
  • Eastern Christianity
• Islamic World
  • Islamic Golden Age
  • Caliphate
  • Somalia
    • Adal Sultanate
    • Ajuran Empire
    • Warsangali Empire
  • Mongol-Turkish (Ilkhanate, Timurid Empire)
  • Ottoman Empire
• India
  • Classical India
  • Medieval India
• Asia
  • Qin China
  • Han China
  • Six Dynasties (China)
  • Sui China
  • Tang China
  • Song China
  • Goryeo Korea
  • Mongol Empire (Yuan China)
  • Ming China
  • Feudal Japan
  • Confucian Vietnam
• Southeast Asia
  • Funan, Chenla, Champa, Anghor Cambodia
  • Dvaravati, Hariphunchai, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya Kingdom, pre Modern Thailand
  • Pagan Burma
  • Philippine Classical Period
  • Sri Vijaya, Sailendra, Mataram and Majapahit
• Moundbuilder and Puebla civilizations
  • Ancient Pueblo peoples
  • Caddoan Mississippian culture
  • Coles Creek culture
  • Fort Ancient
  • Hohokam
  • Mogollon culture
  • Oneota
  • Patayan
  • Plaquemine culture
• Mesomerican civilizations
  • Tlaxcala (Nahua state)
  • Toltec
  • Aztec civilization
  • Maya civilization
  • Zapotec civilization
  • Purépecha
  • Tlapanec people
  • K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj
• Andean civilizations
  • Chimor
  • Kingdom of Cusco/Inca Empire
  • Aymara
  • Muisca (Muisca Confederation)
• African civilizations
  • Wagadou
  • Mali Empire
  • Songhai Empire
  • Ashanti Empire
  • Abyssinia
  • Benin Empire
  • Oyo Empire
  • Dahomey

Modernity

Further information: Modernity

Further information: Cultural bloc, Major world religions, World language, and The Clash of Civilizations

Fall of civilizations

Main article: Societal collapse

Civilisations have generally ended in one of two ways; either through being incorporated into another expanding civilisation (e.g. As Ancient Egypt was incorporated into Hellenistic Greek, and subsequently Roman civilisations), or by collapse and reversion to a simpler form, as happens in what are called Dark Ages.

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; Andrey Korotayev et al. Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2006).
• Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians 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, 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, 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."
• 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.
• Feliks Koneczny in his work "On the Plurality of Civilizations" calls his study the science on civilizations. Civilizations fall not because they must or there exist some cyclical or a "biological" life span. There still exist two ancient civilizations Brahmin-Hindu and Chinese which by no means are ready to fall any time soon. Koneczny claimed that civilizations cannot be mixed into hybrids, an inferior civilization when given equal rights within a highly developed civilization will overcome it. One of Koneczny's claims in his study on civilizations is that "a person cannot be civilized in two or more ways" without falling into what he calls an "abcivilized state" (as in abnormal). He also stated that when two or more civilizations exist next to one another and as long as they are vital, they will be in an existential combat imposing its own "method of organizing social life" upon the other. Absorbing alien "method of organizing social life" that is civilization and giving it equal rights yields a process of decay and decomposition.

Future

See also: Global catastrophic risk

Political scientist Samuel Huntington 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. 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. 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.

Cultural Historian Morris Berman suggests in Dark Ages America: the End of Empire that in the corporate consumerist United States, the very factors that once propelled it to greatness―extreme individualism, territorial and economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth―have pushed the United States across a critical threshold where collapse is inevitable. Politically associated with over-reach, and as a result of the environmental exhaustion and polarisation of wealth between rich and poor, he concludes the current system is fast arriving at a situation where continuation of the existing system saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy is physically, socially, economically and politically impossible. Although developed in much more depth, Berman's thesis is similar in some ways to that of Urban Planner, Jane Jacobs who argues that five pillars of US culture that are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation, and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism, and the growing gulf between rich and poor.

Some environmental scientists also 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. 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.

Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion. Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities," with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, in order to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

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).

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

• The Temples Of Baalbek in Lebanon, show us the religious and architectural styles of some of the world's most influential civilizations including the Phoenicians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Arabs.

• The Roman Forum in Rome Italy, 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, built to protect Ancient Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of nomadic groups. Over thousands of years, the region of China was also home to many influential civilizations.

See also

• Anarcho-primitivism
• Barbarian
• Civilized core
• Cradle of civilization
• Culture
  • Outline of culture
• Historical powers
• History of the world
• Human population
• Intermediate Region
• Kardashev scale
• Law of Life
• Mission civilisatrice
• Muslim world
• New Tribalism
• Proto-civilization
• Sedentism
• Western civilization
• Christendom
• Role of the Christian Church in civilization
• Future Shock

Notes and references

Bibliography

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• Fairservis, Walter A., Jr. (1975). The Threshold of Civilization: An Experiment in Prehistory. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0-684-12775-X. 
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (2000). Civilizations. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-90171-1. 
• Ferrill, Arther (1985). The Origins of War: From the Stone Age to Alexander the Great. New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-25093-6. 
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• Gowlett, John (1984). Ascent to Civilization. London: Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-217090-1. 
• Hawkes, Jacquetta (1968). Dawn of the Gods. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 0-7011-1332-4. 
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• Hicks, Jim (1975). The Persians. New York: Time-Life Books. 
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• Korotayev, Andrey, World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0
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• Nahm, Andrew C. (1983). A Panorama of 5000 Years: Korean History. Elizabeth, N.J.: Hollym International. ISBN 0-930878-23-X. 
• Oliphant, Margaret (1992). The Atlas of the Ancient World: Charting the Great Civilizations of the Past. London: Ebury. ISBN 0-09-177040-8. 
• Rogerson, John (1985). Atlas of the Bible. New York: Infobase Publishing. ISBN 0-8160-1206-7. 
• Sandall, Roger (2001). The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. ISBN 0-8133-3863-8. 
• Sansom, George (1958). A History of Japan: To 1334. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0523-2. 
• Southworth, John Van Duyn (1968). The Ancient Fleets: The Story of Naval Warfare Under Oars, 2600 B.C.–1597 A.D. New York: Twayne. 
• Thomas, Hugh (1981). An Unfinished History of the World (rev. ed.). London: Pan. ISBN 0-330-26458-3. 
• Yap, Yong; Arthur Cotterell (1975). The Early Civilization of China. New York: Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11595-1. 
• Yurdusev, A. Nuri, International Relations and the Philosophy of History: A Civilizational Approach (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

External links

• The dictionary definition of civilization at Wiktionary
• Quotations related to Civilization at Wikiquote
• BBC on civilization
• Top 10 oldest civilizations

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