When a lot of people live in a place together, it’s called civilization. It describes the way people organize their lives through urban areas, shared methods of communication, administrative infrastructure and division of labor. It also includes a set of values and behaviors like modesty, integrity, adherence to codes of conduct, respect for elders, art appreciation and a sense of social responsibility. Civilizations are the building blocks of the societies that surround us today. They are where the human story begins.
Most big-picture historians believe that humans developed civilization roughly at the same time all over the world. This happened at about the same time that cities, writing and specialized forms of work first appeared, along with hierarchies, religions and other social institutions. This package of things is what most of us think of when we hear the word “civilization.” So it matters a lot that it shows up in our history at about the same time all over the planet.
It’s not clear why civilization began. One theory is that when food became abundant as farming grew in popularity, populations exploded, and people needed a system of rulers to keep order. Another possibility is that people decided to cultivate grains because of their nutritional value and other properties, and domesticating animals was a natural extension of this. Either way, this was a very important step forward for humanity.
These changes, along with other cultural, scientific and technological advances, sparked what we call the Bronze Age around 3000 BCE. At this point, we saw the emergence of large and complex societies, some of which are still with us. Some of these societies were sedentary, like the Jomon people of Japan, or a mix of sedentary and nomadic, such as the Proto-Indo-Europeans of the steppes and the hunter-gatherers of prehistory. Some had advanced technology, such as the carved limestone pillars at Gobekli Tepe and the glyphs of the Maya.
All of these changes made up the earliest known civilizations. The most famous of these was ancient Rome, which ruled a huge empire stretching from the Mediterranean to parts of Great Britain and Russia. It had sophisticated politics, a rich culture and advanced science. It was also a highly stratified society with many inherited classes including king, noble, freemen and serfs.
The lesson is that civilization has its downsides, too. It requires a lot of resources to grow and thrive, including a high degree of bureaucracy and control over the land and water. The other lesson is that it takes a very long time for the benefits of civilization to outweigh the costs. So it’s worth asking if we really need it, or whether there are better ways to organize ourselves and the world around us. For example, we should aim for a society that doesn’t rely on complicated bureaucracies to keep people working and feeding themselves and avoids the kinds of massively expensive technologies that are the hallmark of our current civilizations.