What is an Ancient Civilization? - continued

Mesopotamia, which means land between rivers, lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in the area of modern Iraq, north-west Syria and part of south-east Turkey. It is an area of rich farmland and was home to some of the first experiments in agriculture and irrigation. The earliest discovered villages date back to an impressive 6500 years BC.

The age of the villages in Mesopotamia however are relatively young when set against the age of other archaeological discoveries. Signs of human activity have been discovered in Morocco dating back 300,000 years. This is the oldest find to date but did not reveal any cultural items. There are other finds that show signs of human society and cultural development in the items that have been discovered. In terms of age, one of the most significant items of cultural significance is the discovery of ‘The Lion Man’.

The Lion Man is described as an Ice Age masterpiece. It was discovered at the Stadel Cave in Germany in 1939. It is 31cm tall, depicting the body of a man, morphing into the head of a lion. The piece is the oldest known representation of a being that does not exist in physical form. It is made with great technical skill out of mammoth ivory. The Lion Man is 40,000 years old. It is the oldest known artefact that offers evidence of religious beliefs. It is thought to have been passed from person to person in the community as part of ritual. The persistent handling of the object caused the surface to become smooth. In 2017, UNESCO acknowledged Stadel Cave as a World Heritage Site of importance to all humanity.

Another find of noted cultural significance, is The Lady of Brassempouy. A beautifully carved figure, made from mammoth ivory, thought to be between 24,000 and 26,000 years old. It was discovered in 1892 in Brassempouy, a small village in France. The item originated in a period of the Upper Palaeolithic with a material culture designated as the Gravettian. There are other figurines discovered from this same period. The reason this figure is of particular note, is the realistic character of representation, seen in the sculpting of The Lady of Brassempouy. This was made by a person who would be living in a community, who was able to spend a considerable amount of time carving the figure.

Both the Lion Man and The Lady of Brassempouy were made by people who invested a lot of time in making the objects. Time that would be hard to find if there was not some mechanism within the communities they lived, for the support of the essentials to be able to survive in a civilized way. These people lived tens of thousands of years before the rise of ‘Civilization’ in Mesopotamia. What is it then that makes a civilization as something we denote as a ‘civilization’?

There are key components that characterise civilizations that set them apart from the type of settlements and communities that had gone before. The civilizations of Mesopotamia were the first discovered so far to satisfy the defining conditions and characteristics of a civilization. There are 6 main characteristics.

Firstly, all civilizations have large population centers which allows them to develop. Those who live outside the population centres, such as farmers in rural areas, are still part of that regions civilization.

Secondly, all civilizations have large scale, monumental architecture. As well as the extensive network of numerous, close buildings, all civilizations build large monuments and structures. This is seen right through to the modern day. Building large monuments and structures to preserve their legacy.

Civilizations share communication strategies. This includes spoken language, ways of writing, numeric systems, ideas, signs, symbols and ways of illustration and representation. The ability for a society to communicate clearly and uniformly is essential for its stability e.g. Governing a population is hard enough, never more so if they don’t understand what is being said to them! The worlds oldest known written language is Sumerian called cuneiform. It is made up of different collections of triangle shapes, which was initially used for record keeping.

Within civilizations there is a need for administrative systems. A centralised system of government to administer large areas is probably best exemplified by ancient Rome. The Roman civilization was responsible for spreading Latin throughout large areas of Europe as a consequence of their administrative systems, giving rise to the ‘Romance Languages’.

Complex divisions of labour are another key indicator of a civilization. Pre-civilization societies would usually see all the members of the community in largely self sufficient roles. Civilizations see a division, where different people perform different specialized tasks.

In civilizations, divisions in social and economic classes are key to development. It is complex but can be split into two parts based around income and types of work performed. The class structure within a developed civilisation can be quite rigid, although over generations the structures and attitudes can and do change.

The six defining characteristics of a Civilization, that establishes the Sumerian’s as the worlds oldest civilization, are present in all civilizations but do not ensure its survival. It is thought that as well as trade and exploration, conflict is essential and all three must be present for the growth and stability of a civilization. If it is wholly true that civilizations can only be maintained through conflict, it will be time and future history that will establish if peace on earth will see an end to civilization – maybe a new definition will be needed or perhaps a new way will emerge?

Something of particular interest is that the rise of civilisations happened as they did, when they did. For hundreds of thousands of years, humans lived in relatively small numbers, developing into agricultural societies. A way of living that lasted for tens of thousands of years. The Sumerian civilization is dated to 3300BC. In the Indus Valley, new civilizations emerged and thrived by about 2500 BC. In what is now China, civilizations emerged about 1500BC. In what is now Mexico, civilizations emerged about 1200BC. Within the space of just 2000 years, every continent, except Antarctica, stood witness to the rise of civilizations, some very much independently from others. What therefore happened to suddenly, in the long history of mankind, to make a new way for people to live that spanned across the world?

Whatever happened to cause the change in human activity, the starting gun was heard, since which the drive for humans to create civilisations has been continuous. We are part of the life of the world. If it is civilizations that is the way that we are to conduct our lives within, it would seem that the choice was made on our behalf and enacted 5000 years ago. The time was right and so it happened – everywhere!