3.0.3 How Civilisation Began: Antiquity - Overview

Version 1.2 March 2012                                               (Previous Version)

Civilization means cities, not necessarily so called civilized or polite behaviour.

We show how, from about 5000 BCE to about 500 BCE, the development of agriculture produced a food surplus, allowing for elites to commandeer it for their own benefit or for community works, such as irrigation, communal store houses and temples, and for some people to specialize in other activities, such as crafts, administration, war and religion.  Counting, arithmetic, money, debt and writing developed to facilitate government, taxes and trade. 

In the detailed pages we discuss how early empires developed:

·       From about 5000 to 2000 years ago, in Eurasia, villages evolved into city states and early empires, such as those in ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia), Egypt, Persia, Greece, India and China.

·       By 200 BCE states with better technologies of war and government made large empires in Eurasia: the Han in China, the Mauryans in India, and the Romans in Europe. 

·       Sub-Saharan Africa learnt farming from the north, but development was hindered by the local geography and endemic diseases.  Generally cities and states were small or short lived.

·       Empires developed in the Americas from about 2000 BCE to 1500 CE (Mayan, Incan and Aztec), later than in Europe because of geographical differences.  Indigenous development stopped when the Americas were invaded by Western Europeans bordering on the Atlantic.

We show how as circumstances changed and new problems arose, intelligent people in each society developed local solutions.  These included technological advances such as irrigation, the wheel, beasts of burden, ploughs, mills, rowing boats, sailing ships and metals.  This knowledge spread across the continents, especially east-west across Eurasia, less so north-south between or within the Americas, less so southwards into sub-Saharan Africa, and hardly at all into Australia or the remote islands.

Around 1,000 BCE in India the first Hindu poems, the Rig Veda, were composed. Around 500 BCE the (Hindu) Upanishads, Socrates (in Greece), Siddhartha (the Buddha, in India), Mahavira (Jainism, in India), Kung-Fu-Tzu (Confucianism, in China), Moses (Judaism, in Palestine), and perhaps a little later Lao Tzu (Daoism, in China), mixed what they knew of philosophy, science, history and religion and attempted to explain the world, the meaning of life, and social rules.  Others later did the same: Jesus (Christianity, ≈2,000 years ago in Judea), Mohammed (Islam, ≈1,400 years ago in Arabia) and Guru Nanak (Sikhism, ≈500 years ago in India).

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

more                                                                                Statement 16

We learn from antiquity that well-being is promoted by technology, trade and government works that increase productivity, that inequality can lead to waste on grand monuments, and that a few early civilisations encouraged citizens’ rights, elected rulers, and public trials for crimes – simple democracies.  We learn about effecting values such as fairness in trade and justice in public affairs.