- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 29,622
- Location
- Out of Bounds
There's a very interesting point here with respect to what does or doesn't constitute 'civilization'. As Pietro_Mercurios pointed out, there's a more or less stable set of criteria that's been used to date. These criteria, one must note, were assembled by and reflective of the societies whose members enumerated them - making them as much an exercise in self-anointment as clear-eyed analysis.
The classic criteria are all based on coordinated collective artifice as manifested within the retrospective horizon recognized by proto-Western culture at the time of self-anointment (i.e., only as far back in time as, for example, ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt). In other words, the criteria for 'civilization' reflected key elements of those specimens which (a) the criteria-setters recognized from a limited set of historical precedents and (b) reflected what the criteria-setters took to underpin their own self-ascribed status as 'civilized'.
More recent discoveries and analyses have challenged the black / white distinction imposed by these classical criteria. For example, there's a school of thought which claims the Mayan 'civilization' represented localized city-nodes which only loosely coordinated / controlled a relatively decentralized, and much broader, network of 'non-agricultural / non-urbanized' populations. More pointedly, the evidence to date seems to indicate the megalithic ritual center of Göbekli Tepe was sustained by pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer populations.
My point is that the classical benchmark for ascribing 'civilization' is self-serving, based on an obsolete limited viewpoint, and in need of re-thinking. I'm not claiming the classical 'Big 3' characterization is bogus per se. I'm only claiming it needs to be contextualized in a classification schema that affords more shades or levels than the simplistic black / white dichotomy the West has embraced for some time now.
The classic criteria are all based on coordinated collective artifice as manifested within the retrospective horizon recognized by proto-Western culture at the time of self-anointment (i.e., only as far back in time as, for example, ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt). In other words, the criteria for 'civilization' reflected key elements of those specimens which (a) the criteria-setters recognized from a limited set of historical precedents and (b) reflected what the criteria-setters took to underpin their own self-ascribed status as 'civilized'.
More recent discoveries and analyses have challenged the black / white distinction imposed by these classical criteria. For example, there's a school of thought which claims the Mayan 'civilization' represented localized city-nodes which only loosely coordinated / controlled a relatively decentralized, and much broader, network of 'non-agricultural / non-urbanized' populations. More pointedly, the evidence to date seems to indicate the megalithic ritual center of Göbekli Tepe was sustained by pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer populations.
My point is that the classical benchmark for ascribing 'civilization' is self-serving, based on an obsolete limited viewpoint, and in need of re-thinking. I'm not claiming the classical 'Big 3' characterization is bogus per se. I'm only claiming it needs to be contextualized in a classification schema that affords more shades or levels than the simplistic black / white dichotomy the West has embraced for some time now.