This discussion is now closed.
Check out other Related discussions
Is Africa the most underrated continent or is it rightly chastised?
Scroll to see replies
JMonkey
How indeed, I've seen it I was being rhetorical. It's not a good documentary science wise.
I think an inconvenient truth wasn't great either, but it was better than that shag fest. It was a bit Daily Mail, know what I mean?
I think an inconvenient truth wasn't great either, but it was better than that shag fest. It was a bit Daily Mail, know what I mean?
Al Gore was running for president and making huge money. Open your mind a little so you can see both sides of the story.
Myth717
Al Gore was running for president and making huge money. Open your mind a little so you can see both sides of the story.
I am criticising both sides? How much more open minded do you want me to get, open minded so my reason falls out, and the science I learnt evaporates?
I'm just saying be careful with propaganda it can really be little more than lies dressed as truth. Pinch of salt and discretion is advised outside of science.
The difference between inconvenient truth and that program was that most of what it said was accurate. We know for a fact that some scientists were mislead in the swindle into saying things that they did not believe, or their comments taken out of context. We also know that they manipulated the truth fairly heavily.
Like I say though get your stuff from the IPCC or other scientists, its not that hard to pick up a pop science mag or a free paper from a journal or two.
JMonkey
The cradle of civilisation is the fertile crescent and The Arabian peninsula as a whole mostly.
Large image warning:
Personally I find the origin of hominids to be hugely more significant than the origins of farming which has been the last 10,000 of ~3 million years of hominid existence.
It's also strange to associate suitable farming conditions with civilisation. Are contemporary hunter-gatherers uncivilised?
tis_me_lord
Personally I find the origin of hominids to be hugely more significant than the origins of farming which has been the last 10,000 of ~3 million years of hominid existence.
I agree by a long shot the cradle of man is more interesting than the cradle of civilisation.
It's also strange to associate suitable farming conditions with civilisation. Are contemporary hunter-gatherers uncivilised?
Blame the history there are three things necessary for settled civilisation.
1) Code of laws
2) Culture and or religion (probably can't have one without the other historically)
3) Stable agriculture and a means to store it in granaries etc and or animal husbandry and a means to preserve that wouldn't go amiss.
These are called the pillars of civilisation.
But semi nomadic cultures like the Maasai might slip in under the wire because they can do all that but chose not to settle. It's a West centric thing, if you settle you create more time for culture and thus your civ tends to expand technologically. It's not an unfair system, but it can be arbitrary I think.
The Maasai send their best and brightest to the US and UK and other nations to become lawyers and scientists and so on, they almost always return. Clever people they have land rights because of it, although no one would dare war on the Maasai as they are fairly feared. Which is interesting considering the technology level they chose to stay at. And I do mean chose. That to me fits all the criteria, whilst also being somewhat nomadic.
Feral Beast
This is a really interesting video, called an archaeological moment in time. I recommend everyone to watch, it's only 10 minutes long. It puts Africa in a very good light. It basically explains the state of humanity worldwide around 10,000 years ago.
That's 4000 BC, not 10,000 years ago, to be pedantic. But yeah farming certainly didn't exist throughout Europe until 4000 BC ...
JMonkey
Blame the history there are three things necessary for settled civilisation.
1) Code of laws
2) Culture and or religion (probably can't have one without the other historically)
3) Stable agriculture and a means to store it in granaries etc and or animal husbandry and a means to preserve that wouldn't go amiss.
These are called the pillars of civilisation.
But semi nomadic cultures like the Maasai might slip in under the wire because they can do all that but chose not to settle. It's a West centric thing, if you settle you create more time for culture and thus your civ tends to expand technologically. It's not an unfair system, but it can be arbitrary I think.
The Maasai send their best and brightest to the US and UK and other nations to become lawyers and scientists and so on, they almost always return. Clever people they have land rights because of it, although no one would dare war on the Maasai as they are fairly feared. Which is interesting considering the technology level they chose to stay at. And I do mean chose. That to me fits all the criteria, whilst also being somewhat nomadic.
1) Code of laws
2) Culture and or religion (probably can't have one without the other historically)
3) Stable agriculture and a means to store it in granaries etc and or animal husbandry and a means to preserve that wouldn't go amiss.
These are called the pillars of civilisation.
But semi nomadic cultures like the Maasai might slip in under the wire because they can do all that but chose not to settle. It's a West centric thing, if you settle you create more time for culture and thus your civ tends to expand technologically. It's not an unfair system, but it can be arbitrary I think.
The Maasai send their best and brightest to the US and UK and other nations to become lawyers and scientists and so on, they almost always return. Clever people they have land rights because of it, although no one would dare war on the Maasai as they are fairly feared. Which is interesting considering the technology level they chose to stay at. And I do mean chose. That to me fits all the criteria, whilst also being somewhat nomadic.
I don't think culture and civilisation can be quantified in anyway, they're entirely subjective words which can't be defined, I wouldn't even bother to try.
I could argue that hunter gathering works better than agriculture for some, its certainly the case that civilisations have remained hunter-gatherers whilst having exposure to, and trade with, farming peoples - yet they didn't want to farm because it provides a monotenous diet and famine causes starvation. That's just one example, you can give different angles to all of these things.
I would never call the fertile crescent the cradle of civilisation or culture, it's merely the origins of agriculture.
tis_me_lord
I don't think culture and civilisation can be quantified in anyway, they're entirely subjective words which can't be defined, I wouldn't even bother to try.
I could argue that hunter gathering works better than agriculture for some, its certainly the case that civilisations have remained hunter-gatherers whilst having exposure to, and trade with, farming peoples - yet they didn't want to farm because it provides a monotenous diet and famine causes starvation. That's just one example, you can give different angles to all of these things.
I would never call the fertile crescent the cradle of civilisation or culture, it's merely the origins of agriculture.
I could argue that hunter gathering works better than agriculture for some, its certainly the case that civilisations have remained hunter-gatherers whilst having exposure to, and trade with, farming peoples - yet they didn't want to farm because it provides a monotenous diet and famine causes starvation. That's just one example, you can give different angles to all of these things.
I would never call the fertile crescent the cradle of civilisation or culture, it's merely the origins of agriculture.
I think it can be defined and quantified, you just probably don't like the way it is, given its own criteria by definition you are wrong:
Civilised.
1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.
2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.
3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.
4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.
5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.
You want to call it refined enough for you, then fair enough it could be anything. That said you don't make the rules, the English language does apparently.
Characteristics
26th century BC Sumerian cuneiform script in Sumerian language, listing gifts to the high priestess of Adab on the occasion of her election. One of the earliest examples of human writing.
Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.[7] Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy, and other cultural traits.
All human civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation. Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations.
Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes defined as "a word that simply means 'living in cities'".[8] Non-farmers gather in cities to work and to trade.
Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories:
* Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
* Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.
* Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
* Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.[9]
Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or be receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tarrifs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions. To oversimplify, in a village the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat, and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled fairly.
These ten Indus glyphs were discovered near the northern gate of Dholavira.
Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state."[10] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other.
Aided by their division of labor and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.
26th century BC Sumerian cuneiform script in Sumerian language, listing gifts to the high priestess of Adab on the occasion of her election. One of the earliest examples of human writing.
Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.[7] Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy, and other cultural traits.
All human civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation. Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations.
Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes defined as "a word that simply means 'living in cities'".[8] Non-farmers gather in cities to work and to trade.
Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories:
* Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
* Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.
* Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
* Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.[9]
Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or be receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tarrifs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions. To oversimplify, in a village the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat, and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled fairly.
These ten Indus glyphs were discovered near the northern gate of Dholavira.
Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state."[10] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other.
Aided by their division of labor and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.
By definition the cradle of civilisation is in the fertile crescent. I agree though it is a Western idea born out of the early 1st millenia up to the 18th century, and thus it is not a modern institution with entirely egalitarian motivations. But it is what it is. Arguing about the etymology of the word and its definition seems pointless.
Whereas the etiology of civilization is Latin or Roman, defined above as the application of justice by "civil" means...
Latest
Trending
Last reply 3 days ago
Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??Last reply 3 days ago
Is it true that British unis are prejudiced towards degrees from Scottish unis?Last reply 4 days ago
If the Russell Group was now a fair representation of what it still claims to beLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 2 weeks ago
Research Rankings of universities if you add Research Quality & Intensity percentagesLast reply 1 month ago
Is University of Birmingham prestigious and respected well enough in UK ?Trending
Last reply 3 days ago
Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??Last reply 3 days ago
Is it true that British unis are prejudiced towards degrees from Scottish unis?Last reply 4 days ago
If the Russell Group was now a fair representation of what it still claims to beLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 2 weeks ago
Research Rankings of universities if you add Research Quality & Intensity percentagesLast reply 1 month ago
Is University of Birmingham prestigious and respected well enough in UK ?
