Civilization is an idea about what people consider to be a meaningful life and how they have chosen to organize their communities to achieve it. In this sense, civilization refers to the cultural traits that people share with each other, including language and beliefs, social structures, art forms and metallurgy, as well as the way they manage their economy, government and division of labor. Civilizations vary widely across the world and over time, but some common facets are often discussed, such as city life, writing, standardized measurement and currency, a system of law based on contract or tort, a complex division of labor, and organized religion.
In the early days, the first civilizations arose from hunter-gatherer groups that settled into semi-permanent and then permanent communities, producing surplus food and establishing an economy based on trade. Those developments enabled them to develop a complex division of labor with a number of distinct societal classes. They also had a developed transport network that allowed them to travel long distances and to expand their territory with military campaigns.
As a result, their culture became highly complex, with a rich and diverse array of arts and sciences that include painting, music and architecture, as well as metallurgy and mathematics. Their political and religious systems are also highly structured. They also had a fairly sophisticated level of agriculture, with large cities growing on farmlands that were essential not just for housing the populations but to feed them and provide raw materials for trading.
This kind of complex cultural evolution took place around the world over thousands of years, with the earliest examples being associated with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution and crop cultivation. The term civilization comes from the Latin civis, which means “citizen,” and civitas, which is derived from the Greek word for city.
While there are many things that a civilization must have to be considered one, the National Geographic Society notes that the most crucial aspect is urbanization, which is the development of a sedentary community. That said, not every human society that lived in cities can be called a civilization, and many, like the stone temple known as Gobekli Tepe, found in modern Turkey, were not regarded as such because they did not have a complex division of labor or a specialized role for each member of the community.
However, the urbanization that characterized civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, in the Indus Valley of what is now Pakistan and India, on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, in ancient China, and elsewhere was followed by an explosion of other advances, such as advanced writing systems, metallurgy, architecture, science and technology, and organized religion. The development of a complex system of government administration is also an important indicator of a civilization’s level of progress, which is often assessed by how far a nation has come in the evolution of its cities, its military prowess, and its ability to extend its territory under control.