A civilization is a culture with a distinct worldview, language, religion, art, and architecture. It is also a community that has a well-developed social hierarchy and rudimentary form of government. Civilizations have impacted the physical environment through public works projects, from grand monuments to infrastructure systems that improve connectivity and quality of life. In addition, they are known for preserving knowledge through writing, which allows for transmission across generations and allows for the transfer of new ideas to continue evolving. Civilizations have developed a complex and interwoven web of economic, political, cultural, and religious structures that have impacted our lives in ways that are hard to fully understand.
The earliest civilizations started as hunter-gatherer societies that gradually settled into semi-permanent and then permanent communities. These communities eventually began to produce surplus food, allowing people to specialize in jobs, such as farming or pottery making. This division of labor allowed for the production of artifacts and the creation of trade networks to share them with other groups of people.
Civilizations also developed rudimentary forms of government and a complex economic system that required the development of land use laws, trade agreements, and the organization of armies to maintain peace and order. The complexity of these civilizations led to the development of a number of factors that make them more vulnerable to collapse or decline, including environmental damage from deforestation and soil erosion; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; and increasing levels of internal or external conflict.
Historians have traditionally used the term “civilization” to describe societies that exhibited a high degree of cultural and economic development. They have defined this term based on their societal structure, economics, and political institutions. Until recently, these scholars have generally only applied the label to Western European cultures and their descendants. However, as more information has been uncovered about non-Western cultures, such as the Inca Empire of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries CE, the definition of civilization has begun to expand.
While many different aspects contribute to the development of civilizations, two have been especially critical. One is the role of agriculture, which has been the key to sustaining larger and more complex societies. The other is the role of conflict, which has contributed to the development of cities, states, and empires.
Scholars have searched for the reason why some civilizations thrived while others fell apart. This search has been framed through two major theories: the functionalist and the conflict theory. The functionalist theory focuses on how a society’s ability to provide necessary public goods, such as water, healthcare, and agriculture, drives its evolution into a civilization. The conflict theory, on the other hand, focuses on the way a society deals with challenges like war and exploitation, which it uses to fuel its growth into a civilization. Both theories have had their advocates and critics, but this year research has shown that a combination of the two most likely drove the growth of human civilizations.