The word civilization refers to a society with advanced levels of culture, government and technology. Basic characteristics of a civilization include urban settlements, complex religions, job specialization and long-distance trade networks along with centralized governments, writing systems and record keeping. Civilizations also build public works that enhance the lives of citizens and leave behind monuments of cultural achievement.
Throughout history, societies have gone in and out of being considered “civilized.” The first civilizations emerged when people living in cities started to develop advanced forms of culture and government. This is not to say that people who lived in the countryside did not have advanced forms of culture or government, but that city dwellers had a higher level of sophistication and were able to sustain themselves without farming their own food.
What’s more, when a city became a center of trading and culture, people were able to create jobs and specialties for everyone in the community. This led to a more stable social hierarchy and the development of an organized and sophisticated government. The ability to travel and communicate over distances facilitated long-distance trade, which required more complex tools for recording agreements.
Civilization is usually associated with human innovation and technological advancement, but it is important to remember that it is not a fixed term for any particular culture or group of cultures. The development of civilizations is a fluid process, with societies changing and adapting in response to their environments and their interactions with other groups of humans. For example, the people who carved the limestone pillars on Gobekli Tepe 11,000 years ago were nomadic foragers that never developed agriculture, but their culture and society was still quite advanced and complex.
In addition, different types of civilizations can emerge in the same region at the same time. For example, the Sumerians, Shang Chinese and Olmecs/Mayans all created a civilization around the same time in Mesopotamia, but they did not interact with one another and so had a very different cultural identity. It is difficult to determine exactly what the common characteristics of a civilization are, and it is easy for scholars to make value judgments and biases about which groups they consider civilized.
Early on, the label was almost always used to describe societies with a strong government and an organized social hierarchy, and it was often applied only to societies with a European heritage. However, in the twentieth century, non-Western societies that fit this description have begun to be called civilized, including the Inca Empire of Peru from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries CE.