Drive to civilization

I would like to hear what your opinions are on the rise and development of civilization, especially the "why". Why did certain areas fare so much better than others? What compelled humans to build states, to explore and conquer? What makes a site one that can potentially give rise to a great civilzation?

I usually think of two theories when I think about this. Jared Diamond thinks that the rise of human civilization is mostly due to food production, which is ultimately determined by geographic factors, such as climate, area and availability of plant and animal species suitable for domestication.

Other theories postulate that a difficult environment (but not too difficult) actually promotes growth by encouragng the drive to excel. Arnold Toynbee in particular gave several examples in which the the more difficult site gives rise to the more advanced civilization, as opposed to the other site, which would seem to offer more advantages. The examples he gave were Athens vs Beotia, Byzantium vs Chalcedon, the dry hills of Sri Lanka vs the wetter area, New England vs the Southern United States...

Is the drive to civilization present in all humans and it takes luck (to be in the right place at the right time) to form a civilization, or is it that a difficult environment creates civilization by encouraging innovation and hardiness? Or is it something else?

i think its because the weaker males... at some point in history decided to get together in order to control the more dominant ones and you have civilization. Also to fight for land against other organizations of people.

think the fact that the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus and China all began around rivers shows a clear trend that natural resources and geographic viability are the primary key to civilization.

 I think this is only part of the picture. While a river and fertile soils are indispensable for a civilisation to advance and flourish as someone pointed out, harsh environmental condition is the force that drive a people to move out and to seek and to excel. During their struggle they'll gradually develop the necessary skill for survival and to master their environment and exploit the resources around them more efficiently. When suddenly those people find a fertile soil and a good environment, they'll tend to flourish and they'll tend to rapidly develop a very advance civ. But if a people  never faces hardship and lives in a sort of paradise, they are very unlikely to develop an advance civilisation, natural selection doesn't drive them to seek improvements because the favourable environment doesn't apply a selective pressure on them. They'll simply live peacefully, usually later on being conquered. But these civilisations tend to dissapear with dramatic climatic changes also.  Obviously the luck factor is to be considered. For instance the Gauls and germanic interacting with romans to later form their own advance civilisations. Or a weak civlisation meeting a better one, adapting their technology and later on dominating. Of simply a warlike people totally destroying an advance civilisation simply they were somehow vulnerable. The luck factor cannot be neglected, many things can create or destroy a civilisation.

 

Edited by Quetzalcoatl

I think this is only part of the picture. While a river and fertile soils are indispensable for a civilisation to advance and flourish as someone pointed out, harsh environmental condition is the force that drive a people to move out and to seek and to excel. During their struggle they'll gradually develop the necessary skill for survival and to master their environment and exploit the resources around them more efficiently. When suddenly those people find a fertile soil and a good environment, they'll tend to flourish and they'll tend to rapidly develop a very advance civ. But if a people  never faces hardship and lives in a sort of paradise, they are very unlikely to develop an advance civilisation, natural selection doesn't drive them to seek improvements because the favourable environment doesn't apply a selective pressure on them. They'll simply live peacefully, usually later on being conquered. But these civilisations tend to dissapear with dramatic climatic changes also.  Obviously the luck factor is to be considered. For instance the Gauls and germanic interacting with romans to later form their own advance civilisations. Or a weak civlisation meeting a better one, adapting their technology and later on dominating. Of simply a warlike people totally destroying an advance civilisation simply they were somehow vulnerable. The luck factor cannot be neglected, many things can create or destroy a civilisation.

Sometimes that's true. Civilizations often get displaced by others, but that would be looking at individual picture, because even when that happens, "civilization" often remains in that area. For example, the Seleucids, Parthians, Muslums, Mongols, Timurids, etc, all came from different regions, but ultimately their center of culture came to the mesopotamia region after conquering the area. Similar is the case with the Mongols and Manchus in China. Greek culture went to Constantinople during the middle ages beause it was such an advantageous location with a lot of trade resource. When the Ottomans conquered it, they also made their capital at Constantinople.


Edited by Imperator Invictus

Decebal asked why do civilizations rise and fall!  The amazing thing is that the question has been asked over and over again for almost a hundred years and it is a sad commentary on the social sciences that people still ask it because the "experts" still cannot explain it.  Decebal mentioned some of those who have tried.  Toynbee, Sorokin, Hunington, etc. all Ph.ds and all single explanations.  You tie all of the single explanations together and say it is all of them and you still have no real explanation!

The most astute remark I have seen is Vulcan02's remark that it was the  underdogs who got control of the alpha males that enabled civilization! It sound silly, but Vulcan is right!  You see, before the Mesopotamian city states, the world was wrapped up in an agricultural religion based upon the belief that the female principle ruled nature and, hence, ruled everything.  It was a priestess society in which the men were just a lot of useless Casinovas without any authority. 

Then, animal husbandry developed and spread out into the dry plains of southern Russia leading to the development of nomadism.  Along with this change was the gradual realization that the male actually has to impregnate a woman before she can give birth.  That simple fact was unknown in human pre-history until perhaps about 7,000 years ago.  The nomads took it and developed into a really brutal male dominated religion in which, like the animals they herded, the alpha males had all the sex and the male underlings had none.  The underclass males had to invade the fem-fertility people in order to get their own women---as did the first Romans. 

Well, the Sumerians got fed up with all that and so they began to adopt male gods.  The more male gods they adopted, the more the men gained dominance in their agricultural world.  What developed was a compromise of the two religions.  It meant the alpha males could no longer have all the women.  It was a social revolution and we can detect its birth with the old Jewish myth of Adam and Eve.  It was the developing of the concept of the wife and of monogamy.  It mean that the alpha males could not hog all the women.  It was a system of rationing. 

The system was amazingly sucessful, so much so it spread to Egypt.  It also spread to India and China.  Greece and Rome picked it up later.  It was a social revolution for most men and put them in alpha male like positions in society where they also could achieve dominance and prestige---not by collecting women but by contributing so much to society that they could achieve a more attractive wife.  The under achievers ended up with the less attractive ones.

Unfortunately, monogamy is not instinctive in us humans, however!  So, there is built in instability in our patriarchal-monogamous systems.  They have periods of intense social pathology!  They become sick!  The religion divides because of old age so that people lose the feeling of being apart of the system and both crime and corruption grow to be pervasive. 

In history, the decline always led to barbarian conquests.  The barbarians would generally always then adopt the same old religion, then pull things back together and create a new age of strength and growth. 

But again, the cycle keeps coming back. It is like a sort of 500 year cycle. Always, a big sign of the pathology is that the men become so un alpha like that the women become insecure and begin demanding more responsibility.  Unfortunately, this makes the men even less alpha-like and accelerates rather than stops the decline.

Now lets give credit to Vulcan because he is insightful and more interested in real answers and objective accuracy than the whole imense social science establishement!  Can you possibly imagine social theorists writing about "rationing women"?  Or men being lazy, deadbeat cassinovas in the fem-fertility agricultural world?  Will they ever admit that we are really not a monogamous species?  Or that we adopted monogamous religions to make us mongamous?  No, social theorists will interpet the data in any possible way they can rationalize in order to avoid any such objective yet un popular anti-religious and even anti-secular explanation. 

So, you will not read any book, paper, journal or lecture that really explains why civilizations rise and fall. 

charles Brough aka Charles Darso

 

 

 

 

Hmmm, Chalres Brough... Interesting hypothesis, but the fact remains that you can't prove a lot of it. We don't actually know that much about the social order of prehistoric people. Many have assumed that they have had a matriarchal society because of the art we find (especially in Europe) which glorifies the child-bearing feminine body. That doesn't necessarily mean that the society was matriarchal, only that they placed a great importance on women who could bear children, which was vital to the survival of the group. I would rather think that males did have a lot of authority. Warfare has existed since the beginning of time and during such a time it is males who tend to assume control.

And what's all this nonsense about humans suddenly discovering that males are needed to impregnate a woman? Ancinet people were not that stupid: I would think that even human species before Home Sapiens would have made a connection between sex and pregnancy. Why it should take them millions of years to figure that out is beyond me.

And as for an alpha male dominated system spreading to Egypt, India and China from Mesopotamia, why would this happen? Geographical distances wer great and contact between these civilizations doubtful in early times. If it spread by diffusion, why didn't areas in between develop a civilization?

The fact is that this idea is based on a lot of conjecture and we just don't know enough about this period of pre-history to prove it. So if we can't prove, it's more than likely not true.

Originally posted by charles brough Decebal asked why do civilizations rise and fall!  The amazing thing is that the question has been asked over and over again for almost a hundred years and it is a sad commentary on the social sciences that people still ask it because the "experts" still cannot explain it.  Decebal mentioned some of those who have tried.  Toynbee, Sorokin, Hunington, etc. all Ph.ds and all single explanations.  You tie all of the single explanations together and say it is all of them and you still have no real explanation! The most astute remark I have seen is Vulcan02's remark that it was the  underdogs who got control of the alpha males that enabled civilization! It sound silly, but Vulcan is right!  You see, before the Mesopotamian city states, the world was wrapped up in an agricultural religion based upon the belief that the female principle ruled nature and, hence, ruled everything.  It was a priestess society in which the men were just a lot of useless Casinovas without any authority.  Then, animal husbandry developed and spread out into the dry plains of southern Russia leading to the development of nomadism.  Along with this change was the gradual realization that the male actually has to impregnate a woman before she can give birth.  That simple fact was unknown in human pre-history until perhaps about 7,000 years ago.  The nomads took it and developed into a really brutal male dominated religion in which, like the animals they herded, the alpha males had all the sex and the male underlings had none.  The underclass males had to invade the fem-fertility people in order to get their own women---as did the first Romans.  Well, the Sumerians got fed up with all that and so they began to adopt male gods.  The more male gods they adopted, the more the men gained dominance in their agricultural world.  What developed was a compromise of the two religions.  It meant the alpha males could no longer have all the women.  It was a social revolution and we can detect its birth with the old Jewish myth of Adam and Eve.  It was the developing of the concept of the wife and of monogamy.  It mean that the alpha males could not hog all the women.  It was a system of rationing.  The system was amazingly sucessful, so much so it spread to Egypt.  It also spread to India and China.  Greece and Rome picked it up later.  It was a social revolution for most men and put them in alpha male like positions in society where they also could achieve dominance and prestige---not by collecting women but by contributing so much to society that they could achieve a more attractive wife.  The under achievers ended up with the less attractive ones. Unfortunately, monogamy is not instinctive in us humans, however!  So, there is built in instability in our patriarchal-monogamous systems.  They have periods of intense social pathology!  They become sick!  The religion divides because of old age so that people lose the feeling of being apart of the system and both crime and corruption grow to be pervasive.  In history, the decline always led to barbarian conquests.  The barbarians would generally always then adopt the same old religion, then pull things back together and create a new age of strength and growth.  But again, the cycle keeps coming back. It is like a sort of 500 year cycle. Always, a big sign of the pathology is that the men become so un alpha like that the women become insecure and begin demanding more responsibility.  Unfortunately, this makes the men even less alpha-like and accelerates rather than stops the decline. Now lets give credit to Vulcan because he is insightful and more interested in real answers and objective accuracy than the whole imense social science establishement!  Can you possibly imagine social theorists writing about "rationing women"?  Or men being lazy, deadbeat cassinovas in the fem-fertility agricultural world?  Will they ever admit that we are really not a monogamous species?  Or that we adopted monogamous religions to make us mongamous?  No, social theorists will interpet the data in any possible way they can rationalize in order to avoid any such objective yet un popular anti-religious and even anti-secular explanation.  So, you will not read any book, paper, journal or lecture that really explains why civilizations rise and fall.  charles Brough aka Charles Darso

thanks for recognizing my remark Charles Brough but i also must add that though it may be very likely a possibility ... Civilization is more complicated than that. I mean this control that the weaker males had for the smart and strong ones could have been the initial impulse of it then you also had other factors affecting it like natural resources, climate etc. I find a little odd too thought that humans could not tell the connection between sex and pregnancy until 7000BC by the way... but it could be a possibility.

I find your analysis of Barbarians to Civilized people very true and very convincing. But of course us humans are so dumb that to call us the smartest of all animals its really a shame to mother nature. We can see events and record them happen but we seem to not learn anything at all from it... rather than simply replicate it and create the same cycle over and over and over again.

The reason why i said that is that im so pissed that our current society (maybe for a few insightful writers) completely fail to recognize these primal instincts that drives us humans in every action that we do in our life. For example Freud claimed that humans act the way they act not just to blend in the social system imposed but also because their sexuality drives them to do those certain things. Now even today like many thousand of years ago there is alpha males etc... but they hide even though they might get all the action because of the social and religious institutions do not accept them. These are probably your porn directors, strip club owners, and all the people who usually do stuff unaccepted in our society.  But they themselves too are products of the system only getting around it through these activites.