Civilization is defined as complex societies with advanced culture and social stratification. Studying the history of civilization provides important context for understanding the present and predicting the future. It progresses from establishing facts about what happened, to exploring why events occurred and how civilizations evolved over time. This introduction outlined key aspects of civilization like culture, technology, cities, and religion; discussed studying history for prediction, education, and inspiration; and presented how the field has advanced from chronicling facts to seeking causal explanations through improved sources and methods.

1. History of
Civilization
INTRODUCTION

2. TOPICS
 What is Civilization?
 Timeframe: from Big Picture to Here and Now
 Why bother studying?
 History of History
 From What Happened? to Why It Happened?
 How it is done
 How we will proceed

3. WHAT IS CIVILIZATION ?
 Easier to describe than to define
 Culture, Society, State ?..
 “Culture” has more than one meaning
 From “Band” to “Society”
 State: sedentary society and social stratification
 Civilization (1) = complex society with identity
 Civilization (2) = influential culture of society
Civis (latin)
- citizen

4. CIVILIZATION TRAITS
Culture
Records Technology
Science
Cities Religion
Rules
Also:
 Society
 Arts
 Division of
labor
 Trade &
Money

5. CULTURE
 Culture meant “improvement” Cultura (latin)
- cultivation
Polychrome cave painting of bison
Altamira, Spain, ca. 15000 BCE

6. RECORDS
 Animals use communication
 Advanced communication means use of language
 Recorded language needs symbols
 Use of symbols requires abstract thinking
Jiahu proto-writing symbols
Henan, China, ca. 6600 BCE
 Records mean
accumulation
of knowledge

7. DO’S AND DON'TS, RULES, LAWS
 Social animals’ behaviour is complex,
they learn and follow rules
 Human language can be used to codify the rules
 Authority teaches and enforces the rules, i.e. passes the law
 Band evolves into society, rules and laws become the legal system
Important abstraction:
Ma’at represents
truth and justice
Egypt, before 2400 BCE
Hammurabi Code
clay tablets
Babylon, ca. 1772 BCE

8. CITIES
 Social animals’ agglomerated dwellings
are complex, and rely on division of labor
 From dwellings to settlements to towns to cities
 Natufian culture: stone age, before agriculture,
sedentary (Fertile crescent, 11000 – 8000 BCE)
 How city is different from a huge village?
 Social stratification, government, services
 Jericho: 1000 inhabitants ca. 7000 BCE
 Babylon: 60000, ca. 1700 BCE
 Alexandria: 300000, ca. 200 BCE
 Rome: 1 million, ca. 1 CE
 London: 6.5 million, end of 19th century
 Tokyo: around 20 million, 21st century
City as microcosm:
Map of Jerusalem
(XII century CE)

9. TECHNOLOGY
 Tools are used by primates,
elephants, dolphins
 Control of fire: before 100’000 BCE
 Transition from wooden, bone, stone
implements to metal tools: ca. 6000 BCE
 From making of dwellings to construction to
engineering
 From invention of wheel (ca. 4000 BCE) to
transportation
 Production of energy: from sails and harnessing
rivers to combustion engines to electricity to
nuclear power
 In communications: from drums to satellites
TOPIO 3, 2011
τέχνη (greek)
- skill, craft

10. SCIENCE
 Science is a system of empirical, theoretical,
and practical knowledge about the world
 Science requires abstract thinking
 Science is different from technology: until
XV-XVIth centuries CE there was little direct
influence of science on practical life tasks
 Ancient science roots:
astronomy, geometry, agriculture, mechanics
 Science evolved by 1600-s from proto-science
(alchemy, astrology) by experiment and
reasoning
 Scientific method (observation, explanation,
prediction): from Aristotle to Renaissance
Scientia (latin)
- knowledge
If a man will begin
with certainties,
he shall end in
doubts; but if he
will be content to
begin with doubts,
he shall end in
certainties.
— Francis Bacon (1605)

11. RELIGION
 Religion is a system of beliefs about the world
 Religion requires abstract thinking
 Religion evolved from cults of spirits and
ancestors, with use of rituals
 Organized religion emerged as a part of Neolithic
revolution
 Religion provided means in establishing order and
stability: historically was no society without one; it
maintains peace and justifies authority
 Religion is related to establishing values
 Can be theistic or atheistic, theocratic or anarchic
Religio (latin)
- obligation
to gods
Anselm of Canterbury
(1033 - 1109)

12. CIVILIZATION IS COMPLEX
“Civilization began the first
time an angry person cast a
word instead of a rock”
“Civilization is a race
between disaster and
education”
Sigmund Freud
(1856 – 1939)
H. G. Wells
(1866 – 1946)

13. CIVILIZATION AS IDENTITY
 Identity:
 Telling “close” from “foreign”
 Link between individual person and larger group
(whole family/community/society)
 Rooted in individual desire to belong
 Difference between ancient Greeks and Romans:
City (Polis) vs. State (Republic, then Empire)
 Modern nationalism: since 19th century –
national state vs. empire
 Family/Clan, Language, Culture, Nation,
Religion, State, Empire, Civilization
Identitas (latin)
- sameness
From Punch (1907)

14. THE COSMIC CALENDAR
 13.7 Billion years since the Big Bang represented as one year:
The last 28 sec of the last day…

15. 12 200 YEARS FROM NEOLITH TO PRESENT
Around 10200 BCE:
 Neolithic Era, or “New Stone” Age begins
 Single species of Homo Sapiens remains
 Emergence of farming
ca. 3500 BCE: Invention of writing
ca. 7500 BCE: Urban settlements
in Fertile Crescent
RECORDED HISTORY
ca. 5500 BCE:
Copper smelting
Modern Time:
500 years
1000 1 CE 1000 2000
ca. 2000 BCE: Domesticated horses
in Fertile Crescent
1000 CE: Leif Ericson
lands in North America
ca. 1000 BCE: Bronze Age Collapse
bef. 4000 BCE: Myths (Creation, Flood)

16. OUR TIME: THE LAST SECOND OF COSMIC YEAR
Before:
 Climate cools, population of Europe is stable
at low level after losing half to Black Death
in 1350-s, then picks up again
 Money are the new focus of economy
 Byzantium’s millennium ends in 1453
 Renaissance: classical heritage absorbed
 Cities, Guilds, Universities
 Moveable type printing: books circulate
 Portuguese go far into Atlantic
1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000
Conquest of America 30 years war Turkish war 7 years war Napoleonic Wars WWI WWII
Steam
Engine
American Independence,
Speed of Light measured
French
Revolution
New
World
Discovery
Electric
Telegraph
Bell’s
Telephone
TV
broadcast
Copernicus,
Machiavelli,
Sack of Rome
Dutch
Republic
Telescope
Luther’s
Theses
Commonwealth
of England

17. OUR PERSPECTIVE
 Western civilization’s roots are
 Ancient Greeks and Romans
(democracy, legal system, philosophy)
 Christianity (which in turn has roots in
Hebrew Bible)
 So it is said that Western civilization
sources are “Athens and Jerusalem”
 Notions like Renaissance, Modernity,
etc. are not universal, they relate
mostly to Western world Ἀριστοτέλης
‫משה‬

18. WHY BOTHER ?
 Prediction: What lies ahead1
 Education: Values, Models, Examples11
 Inspiration and Entertainment111
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it”
George Santayana (1863 – 1952)
“Generals are always prepared to fight the last war”
Saying popular in 20th century
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history
is the most important of all the lessons of history”
Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)

19. THE ORIGINS
 Ancients had stories of heroes and kings
 Epic narratives existed before the records
ἱστορία (greek)
- inquiry
Ἡρόδοτος
484 – 425 BCE
Traveler, Writer
“Father of History” (..or “of Lies”)
Θουκυδίδης
460 – 395 BCE
General, Researcher
Impartiality, Fact checking

20. ANY PROGRESS ?
 Civilization is definitely moving… but where?
 Hesiod (Ἡσίοδος, ca. 750 – 650 BCE):
from Age of Gold to Silver to Bronze to Iron
– decline in happiness
 With passing of time there seemed to be
always more things and more people around
 Bible: (1) Fall of Man (2) Kingdom to come
 After Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution :
Era of Optimism, ending in 20th century with World Wars
Progressus (latin)
- an advance

21. THE CYCLES
‫ָּל‬‫כ‬ ‫ין‬ֵ‫א‬ ְ‫ו‬-‫ׁש‬ ָּ‫ד‬ָּ‫ח‬,‫ת‬ַּ‫ח‬ַּ‫ת‬‫ׁש‬ֶ‫מ‬ָּ‫ש‬ַּ‫ה‬(‫ֶת‬‫ל‬ֶ‫ה‬ֹ‫ק‬)
And there is nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9)
1377 1776 1918

22. FROM WHAT TO WHY
 From facts to explanations
 From surface to inner workings
Comparison of size between ships of
Zheng He (1421) and
Christopher Columbus (1492)
1997
 Why some civilizations are more
successful than another?
 The Rise of the West by W. McNeal
(1963)

23. HOW IT WORKS
 Sources: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary
 Establishing Chronology
 Comparisons and generalizations
 Use of Language and other evidence
 Archaeology and excavations
 Artifacts (art, buildings, implements, junk)
 Dating by Radiocarbon method
 DNA analysis
Anna Comnena (1083-1153)
and Alexiad (1148)

24. HISTORY AROUND US
January 19, 2013, Saturday

25. IMPORTANT UNDERSTANDINGS
 Everything is changing: primarily our grasp on
facts and interpretation of what is going on
 Evolution: humanity (societies and cultures,
science and technology) evolves, civilizations
raise, compete, and fall
 Moreover, our understanding of all these
things also evolves
 All periods and definitions are imprecise
(the devil is in his usual area)
 We have our position but we are not
judgmental
Tempora
mutantur, nos et
mutamur in illis
— attributed to emperor
Lothair I (795 – 855)

26. HOW WE WILL PROCEED
Prerequisites:
 Open mind
 Some
geography
 Basic
perspective
 Questions
“Get your facts first, and then you can
distort them as much as you please”
 Go with timelines, by cultures
 Focus on most durable: the art,
also on fields where the progress
is undeniable: science, technology
 Ars longa, vita brevis
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

27. SUMMARY
 Civilization, or rather civilizations, are complex societies
(and their cultures) defining life of humankind for more than
last five thousand years
 Learning more about history of
civilization is important for
understanding of what is
present and what may lay in
the future
 History starts with facts and
progresses to questions of
civilizations’ evolution
 Questions?

28. IN THE NEXT CHAPTER:
 Global spreading of
Homo Sapiens
 Beginnings of agriculture
 Cradles of civilization
 The Fertile Crescent
 From stone to metals
 The Ancient Sumerians

29. Thank You