World Civilizations

World Civilizations
The Greeks thought it easy to define “civilization”: it referred to the quality of citizens – free men living in cities.

Today the concept is regarded as more complex subtle and problematic. The term “culture” is use to encompass all the ways of life and customary behaviors invented by human beings.

Civilization is, therefore a particular kind of culture, characterized by increasing complexity in social economic and political organization, a settled life, a food supply in excess of subsistence levels, occupational specialization, writing and reckoning and innovations in the arts and sciences – all maintained by a large number of people over a significant period of time.

The first civilizations developed in the period between about 3500 and 2500 BC in a few delimited areas of the world.

Historians continue to pose questions about the nature of the factors that cause the development of civilizations and nurture their growth.

A variety of causes involving some complex balance between the bounties and challenges of geographic, climatic and economic factors have been suggested. It has often been noted that four of the earliest civilizations developed in river valleys: the Nile Rover of Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates in the Middle East, the Indus Rover in India and the Yellow Rover in China.
World Civilizations