WHAT DO WE UNDERSTAND BY CIVILIZATION

What is Civilization?

Civilization is a form of human culture in which many people live in urban centers, have mastered the art of smelting metals, and have developed a method of writing.

The first civilizations began in cities, which were larger, more populated, and more complex in their political, economic and social structure than Neolithic villages.

One definition of civilization requires that a civilized people have a sense of history -- meaning that the past counts in the present.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines civilization as "the action or process of civilizing or of being civilized; a developed or advanced state of human society.”

In 1936, the archeologist V. Gordon Childe published his book Man Makes Himself. Childe identified several elements which he believed were essential for a civilization to exist. He included: the plow, wheeled cart and draft animals, sailing ships, the smelting of copper and bronze, a solar calendar.

In 1955, Clyde Kluckhohn argued that there were three essential criteria for civilization: towns containing more than 5000 people, writing, and monumental ceremonial centers.

Mesopotamian Civilization The history and culture of Mesopotamian civilization is

inextricably connected to the ebb and flow of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Civilization emerged in Mesopotamia because the soil provided a surplus of food.

With this surplus, people could settle down to village life and with these new settlements, towns and cities beg began to make their appearance, a process known as urbanization.

The Mesopotamians built massive temples or ziggurats which housed the priestly class, the human representatives of the gods.

The priests controlled the religious life of the community, the economy, land ownership, the employment of workers as well as the management of long distance trade.

Ancient Sumer

The greatest achievement of Sumerian civilization was their "wedge-shaped" system of writing. Using a reed stylus, they made wedge-shaped impressions on wet clay tablets which were then baked in the sun.

Once dried, these tablets were virtually indestructible and the several hundred thousand tablets which have been found tell us a great deal about the Sumerians.

Originally, Sumerian writing was pictographic, that is, scribes drew pictures of representations of objects.

The Code of Hammurabi According to the code, there were three social classes in

Babylonia: an upper class of nobles (government officials, priests, and warriors), the class of freemen (merchants, artisans, professionals, and wealthy farmers), and a lower class of slaves.

An offense against a member of the upper class was punished with more severity than the same offense against a member of a lower class. The principle of retaliation ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth") was fundamental.

The law code also extended into the daily life of the ordinary citizen. Builders were held responsible for the buildings they constructed. If a house collapsed and caused the death of its owner, the builder was put to death. Goods destroyed by the collapsed must also be replaced and the house itself rebuilt at the builder's

expense.

Egyptian Civilization

It was the fertile valley of the Nile River that allowed Egyptian civilization to flourish over the course of many centuries.

Geographically, it was divided between the Black Land and the Red Land, and politically, between Upper and Lower Egypt.

Egyptian gods were often represented as animals – as falcons, vultures, a cobra, dog, cat or crocodile. For the Egyptians, because animals were non-human, they must have possessed religious significance. Other gods, such as Ptah and Amon, were given human representation, but the most important god Re, was not represented at all.

The myth-makers of the Ancient Near East and of Egypt did not seek to rationally or logically explain nature. Although these civilizations certainly exercised their minds to build ziggurats and pyramids, irrigation canals and pottery wheels, cuneiforms and hieroglyphics, they did not advance to the creation of science. They did not deduce abstractions, nor did they make hypotheses or establish general laws of the nature world.

These efforts – science and philosophy – were the product of another culture, located in another time and place.

Indus Valley Civilization

This civilization is also known as Harappan Civilization. After the excavation of Mohenjothera & Harrappa, the

Archeologists came to the conclution that those lived there in that period were well civilized, trading with Mesopotamia,Samaria,and with some more countries.Agriculture was their main profession.They had well planned towns with good water facilities, drainage,roads, and common wells and bath rooms.They had cattle's, and they knew to store water as ponds so that they could use for agriculture. People lived were Dravidian.

After the invasion of Aryans these people lost there lands gradually, and got mixed with them unavoidably.

So we can conclude that ,“Hinduism is nothing but the culture of those mixed people[Dravidian & Aryans].”

Conclution

With the help of Civilization there was a huge development of human life. Like, simple villages became urban cities, well developed towns, farming and irrigation techniques, development / construction of road ,building, tower, water tank, well, pyramid, etc.