A civilization is a package of social traits that includes urbanization, state, specialized labor, and organized religion. Civilization also includes complex manufactures, and advanced arts. It is a label applied to societies that are more sophisticated than their contemporaries, and it is most widely used by modern Western historians and archaeologists of European descent. However, the civilizational package spread throughout the world and is now a part of the daily lives of billions of people. It is not always clear when the civilizational concept started, and there are disagreements about what is a true civilization.
The first civilizations developed in river valleys, which made it easy to grow crops and to provide water. These early settlements were not cities in the sense of a central government or city walls, but they were towns and villages that grew into regional centers with a large population. A key development of the first civilizations was a division of labor. This essentially split the work force into groups, each of which specialized in an aspect of life, such as agriculture or building construction.
These first civilizations had other features, such as a system of writing, standardized measurement, currency, tort- and contract-based legal systems, architecture, engineering, art, mathematics, metallurgy, science, and technology. In addition, they had a class-stratified society, with wealthier people having more land and money than poorer people.
By the end of the first millennium BCE, a civilization had developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and India. In the following millennium, a civilization formed in Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America), the Indus Valley, and South Asia. Civilizations ultimately arose on every continent except Antarctica.
While civilization was a major advance in human society, it did not necessarily lead to happiness and good health. As the historian Joseph Tainter argued in The Collapse of Complex Societies, most civilizations were plagued with environmental damage; they depended on long-distance trade for resources that could not be produced locally; and they had to mobilize ever more resources to maintain an army to defend their borders from barbarian invaders.
A few societies, such as the Olmec of Mesoamerica and the Inca of Peru, were truly civilizations in the sense that they combined all five aspects of civilization. Others, such as the Watson Brake of North America and Poverty Point in South America and Moundville in Mexico, had a few but not all of these elements, but they are nevertheless considered civilizations because they were highly literate, had a complex division of labor, had an elaborate culture of sculpting and pottery, and had a form of organized religion. In this way they are comparable to the Roman and Abbasid caliphates. They are just not as rich and powerful as the Roman or Abbasid empires.