Civilization is the advanced stage of human society in which people have reached a high level of culture, science, technology, industry, and government. Civilization is a cultural phenomenon that can include aspects of architecture, art, education, government, religion, and many other things. Civilization is a cultural opposite of barbarism, which includes primitive societies that lack modern amenities like running water and electricity.
Civilized societies developed a wide range of technologies and inventions to improve living conditions, including tools, pottery, metals, agriculture, and domesticated animals. They also developed cities and systems of writing. They have relatively complex social structures, including hierarchies and class systems. Civilizations have a rich heritage of cultural traditions, which they pass on through their art and music.
The word civilization comes from the Latin civitas, meaning “city.” It is thought that the first civilizations developed around 3400-3000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia. They consisted of towns and cities with monumental infrastructure, official bureaucracies overseeing agricultural, economic, and religious activities, the earliest known system of writing, and sophisticated arts and technologies.
People first settled in semi-permanent communities when agrarian agriculture began to produce surplus food. This allowed people to specialize in work and create a division of labor. Individuals who produced more than enough to provide for themselves became wealthy, and they gained status as elite rulers, called kings. They were able to maintain armies of warriors for defense and to undertake large-scale public works projects, such as irrigation schemes.
Most early civilizations developed in river valleys, which provided natural resources such as silt deposited by floods and canalized to magnify agricultural productivity. These civilizations grew to be large and powerful, and they established a pattern of inter-cultural trade both within and beyond their boundaries.
While the exact origin of civilization is unknown, researchers have identified some key features. These include urbanization (the development of towns and cities); hierarchies or classes, such as the nobility or upper class; organized religion; writing; arts and architecture; metallurgy; and trade and diplomacy.
A number of historians have described civilizations in terms of their economic and military power as well as the degree to which they ruled over other cultures. These include the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Romans.
Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies (1990) suggests that civilizations evolve to a point of diminishing returns, and then they collapse. He argues that these limits are imposed by the nature of human nature and by environmental conditions. Jared Diamond, in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), describes five major causes of the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, especially deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; internal or external violence; and societal responses to these problems.