Civilizational development through invention, diffusion, and historical interaction

Evolution of Civilizations as a result of a chain of developments

Evolution of Civilizations

Prehistoric societies have produced major inventions, but indeterminable origin. One might think that the fire was domesticated in different sites and livestock and agriculture were introduced several times over the millennia obscure.

It is conceivable that the metal has been repeatedly invented by potters sensitive to land they were cooking or other founders of the long lines of blacksmiths, but as we complete the list of innovations due to the thousands of magicians technicians, to include the rafts and boats, myths and gods, sticks and strings making it count drift, engravings and symbols, ancestors of the scriptures, a crucial question moved.

During this long history unknown, each of the tiny people can not have discovered everything; every dramatic migrations. A dispersant on the planet's slow flows of human settlement could take from one site to another, nor conquer our stock of knowledge and skills already acquired. Outbreaks of civilization had spread through the effect of imitation, encouraged or not, voluntary or forced exile of pressure of population or the benefit of enslaving more conquests than destructive.

Archaeologists circumvent this difficulty by distinguishing the "ages" of stone, bronze or iron, by playing the roles of the invention and dissemination and reserving the last prehistoric century's finer differentiations, as ceramics, jewelry and tools they find trace. Only anthropologists, specialists in people they consider more or less "primitive" to venture more accurately, how to Mauss assigning to the ancestors of Melanesian and Polynesian South Pacific a civilization that would have been common.

In his Grammar of Civilizations Braudel presents them as "the first and most complex of permanence," but it does not clearly distinguish which ultimately fall into the common treasury several civilizations, if not all, of what particularized one of them, at such time and in such a space.

Background

It certainly fails to follow Durkheim in which civilizations are "a kind of moral environment that surrounds a number of nations" and remains true to Mauss, always attentive to the full range of tools and institutions. Moreover, he refuses to speak of a civilization as "a being or an organization, or a character, or a body, even historic." Braudel and eliminates the risk of philosophical idealism and evolution more or less historicized, but following their long tributaries of civilizations that are currently active judge, it is close not less likely to lend them to excessive permanence.

It is better to treat these hotlines in their real historical time, full of hyphens, and times of innovations as to analyze macro-realities as such. In this rigorous theoretical perspective, civilization must take place in the world system in which it falls, except to justify its future when the global system itself is transformed.

It must be related with the various companies that make up the global system. In other words, it must be reported to the people related and intertwined or separate, these companies include. Thus, it must be located on the three types of training that the macro-sociological analysis can discern - but not to separate - in every society: economic, political and ideological (or cultural).

Analysis

In more concrete terms, we can imagine a civilization on the basis of what is too often overlooked or underestimated the features common to various customary daily life, that is to say, knowledge, say, skills, etiquette, etc., peddled in the networks of guests. Indeed, a common civilization is recognized by the kinship of languages, the similarity of uses for food, clothing, housing, family relationships, customs, traditions, festivities and rites of passage, etc. And it is also reflected in the relationship tools, handicrafts and rural standards of living together in the various clusters of people, etc.

In short, it is manifested by the fact that men live by similar customs, it being understood that the common features of traditional dense unevenly from one society to another, depending on the gradients of civilization which is common. In the geographic margins of each civilization, these gradients can be more complex by the effect of interference between two or more civilizations. Over time, similar margins are emerging as corporations; time related by the same civilization, are driven in different ways by their own history.

Heritages give greater visibility to the common civilization. Architectural heritage of the pyramids, temples, palaces and castles, estates less splendid but more useful for Highways, water and other amenities; heritage "landscape" more valuable, but rendered invisible by their obvious: you have to be dazzled by the terrace cultivation Bali and other sites, to reflect the fact that thousands of years of work have deforested, Desouches, Depierre, irrigation, drains, etc., lands useful to man, but according to technical and conspicuous for purposes that each civilization.

When business needs and adds prestige to urban heritage, religions, however, that mark their territories of pagodas, churches, monasteries, mosques and other places of worship, this singularity is affirmed more, while the forms of urban and rural habitat are specified, they are luxuries or miserable. And civilization, always customary in everyday life acquires additional visibility monumental materializing the skills of craftsmen-artists who enrich the work of the builders.

Added to this are, of course, the wealth and prestige that comes from adding additional, oral traditions of all time, written tradition gradually spread to shops and palaces, and the ideological apparatuses of all kinds, from which they eventually win the depths of peoples. So, the graphics become, like languages, distinctive marks of the various civilizations.

Maturation profoundly affects trade flows of civilization. On the one hand, indeed, she gave birth to a new type of world system, characterized by the establishment, ports and islands in the oasis well tolerated enclaves protected by various empires, trading networks that grow as far as their interconnections as possible, with little regard for the political control of territories crossed or rubbed shoulders.

On the other hand, many seek empires, not without success, to capture market exchanges to enslave them for their own purposes, which greatly expands their capabilities fiscal, administrative and military. Thus, the old-world systems are sometimes stronger, sometimes eroded by the efforts of merchants and the piracy that often accompany them in the marine areas, river and where the caravan trade unfolds.

Besides, one should not overestimate the trade that car a little amber, silk and spices between worlds that continue virtually ignore, as are numerous and fragile sections, strangers to another of these exchange networks. The strengthening of trade occurs only over very long stretches of centuries and the commercial networks do not lengthen significantly at the cost of slow progress and cabotage fleets and offshore navigation. The plurality of global low or no joined by the fragile and thin threads of the exchange remains the rule until the 14th-15th century, despite the frequent links dealers already on the edge of India, China and few folds of the Sunda Archipelago and the Mediterranean.

Trade and empires combine to give writing a civilizing value more abundant, the "Holy Scriptures" where religions brew their myths, their rituals and arcane legal codifications to such as the Justinian Code, or the lex Rhodia With glorious libraries, from Alexandria to Baghdad and Cordoba, create a new heritage, that of literature and art, like their predecessors, Hindus and Chinese that Europe discovered later. Moreover, the monumental heritage enriched by cities less sumptuous than the palace, but a wealth of more diverse and more radiant as it crossed the peregrinations of any kind and, gradually, more and provenance more varied.

The glory of ancient Babylon is now outclassed by that of Byzantium and modern Venice, all examples to generalize to other worlds and other times. Not that we should be seduced by the ideas of Spencer which cities the main focus of all great civilizations, but simply because the consideration of urban phenomena used to weight the opinions that are too frequent religions "universal" senior officers and in any case, the essential reference points the so-called civilizations.

The Geopolitics of these religions, however, their role back to the exact extent appropriate to the macro-sociology. In all the old world systems, the primitive cults are subject gradually conquering pressure, that they come from clans specialized prophets innovative, state attention to the common discipline of their subjects or any other process.

The priests of any kind that these movements are sometimes produced in the units of the states most significant, in a prominent or subordinate, but not the powers that be are indifferent to their action.

Combinations of power and the sacred are simplified gradually according to some models validated by experience: religion imposed by the state to all his subjects (even by the triumph of a victorious church of its rivals, like Christianity) religion confused with the service of the prince or the city; religions tolerated under surveillance, as nations annexed by the traditions of a vast empire; religions imported by merchants, pilgrims (or later colonizers), but chased or tolerated within the limits of local franchises before their eventual consolidation; religions brought by military victories guaranteeing their relevance (in the way of Islam).

In all these figures, religions "universalized" or juxtaposed within the limits of an empire or in many states of the world system in place, take a great weight, when making their major anchors: in governing the ceremonies in which power and civic displays dynastic.

By monopolizing the formation of elites, or the selection to certain functions, appropriating the rites of passage for the entire population, in indoctrinating and watching it, by adding to its rites and prayers of any charitable institutions, caregivers or education in short as "directing minds," that is to say, entering the benefit of a secular habit, to the depths of the customary daily life.

Here is the civilizing aspect of religion, in that they normalize behavior, provide the power it requires respect and tend to govern conventional wisdom. All ambitions met in various ways from one religion to another 8 So that the practices and representations disseminated by each of them becoming, as well as languages?

or customs of everyday life, distinctive signs helping to specify the various civilizations, in other words, there is no of civilization Confucian, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, etc.. But at different times and in different areas, one or other of these qualities can manifest itself with particular vigor, among many features, historically variable, which specify such a civilization.

Conclusion

From this brief overview, probably erroneous in several respects, by the gaps in my information or my reflection, we still draw a conclusion that seems theoretically well-founded. Is that the prospect of a universal civilization feeding the daily lives of all people fairly similar customs, derived from the levels and kinds of life of Western populations and ending of the 20th century ideologies spreading among them, certainly varied, but nonetheless responsible for shared values.

All unfolding on the basis of capitalist economic institutions and in political institutions generalizing the parliamentary democracies of our time is a figment of the imagination, a projection arbitrary unscientific or even pragmatic one that is wishful thinking. Hence the practical conclusion: Civilization as a project should be subject to contradictory thoughts constantly updated to clarify the action of economic agents, state and cultural, whose business is international, and they want know it or not, the main vector of development of civilizations.

This new situation calls into question the very idea of?

"Western civilization," and this is actually made possible, ironically, by the power of this civilization and its maintenance as a reference usurped human development.

Toynbee's idea of?

a civilization replacing the other, a chain of civilization, an idea finally contradicted by the power of Western civilization which requires his continued dominance might be judged as a sham, could be replaced the idea of?

a schism within this civilization. Some might argue that this has already happened with the Reformation, but it seems that the description we make the state of our "civilization," which is undoubtedly the daughter of the schism, shows that the schism has turned imposture.

Our civilization has become today, by the force of his technique, universal civilization (hence the sounds of the "end of History" Fukuyama type and returning to the nineteenth century), the implication of this civilization can only come from within, and the heart of this civilization.

This is why we must pay attention to two facts: how the tension of the relations between America and Europe does not actually schismatic notions (of Europe compared to America) in What the rediscovery of the need to find references to transcendent even those who question our civilization does not reconcile the two poles perceived as enemies for centuries: the need for justice (tempo progressive) and the need for traditional (conservative tempo or reactionary).

The historical perspective is used to classify a civilization (rather than a country) as a unit, is of relatively recent origin. From the middle Ages, most historians have adopted a religious viewpoint or national level. The religious point-of-view prevailed until the eighteenth century among historians Europeans, who saw the revelation Christian as the most important historical event, taking as a reference for classification. The first European historians did not study other cultures rather than as curiosities or as potential areas of missionary activity.

The national point-of-view, unlike religion, is developed in the early sixteenth century from political philosophy and historian of the Italian statesman Niccolo Machiavelli, who argued that the proper object of historical study was the State. The Spanish Francisco de Vitoria, founder of international law addressed the issue of the rights of the Crown of Spain in the conquest of America. However, many historians who later made?

the chronicle of the national states of Europe and America only studied societies outside the European culture, to describe their submission to the European powers, in his view more progressive.

Endnotes

1. Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994,

ISBN 0-631-18206-3

2. Trigger, Bruce, Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (New

Perspectives on the Past), Blackwell Publishers, 1998, ISBN 1-55786-977-4

3. Stocking, George, Victorian Anthropology, Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0-02-931551-

4

4. Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward, a History of Anthropological Thought, 1981, Basic

Books, Inc., New York.

5. Graber, Robert B., A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, 1995,

Thomas Jefferson University Press, Kirksville, MO.

6. Harris, Marvin, the Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture, 1968, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.

7. Hatch, Elvin, Theories of Man and Culture, 1973, Columbia University Press,

New York.

8. Hays, H.R., From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of Social Anthropology,

1965, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

9. Johnson, Allen W. And Earle, Timothy, The Evolution of Human Societies: From

Foraging Group to Agrarian State, 1987, Stanford University Press.

10. Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc.,

Prospect Heights, Illinois.

11. Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old

World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective (First ed.).

Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0.

12. Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics:

Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-

00559-0.

13. Kuklick, Henrika, The Savage Within: The Social History of British

Anthropology, 1885 -- 1945, 1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

14. McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009, Yale University Press, USA and London.

15. Mesoudi, A. (2007). Using the methods of experimental social psychology to study cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural

Psychology, 1(2), 35 -- 58. Full text

16. Morgan, John Henry, In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious

Consciousness 2007 Cloverdale Books, South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0

17. Raoul Naroll and William T. Divale. 1976. Natural Selection in Cultural

Evolution: Warfare vs. Peaceful Diffusion. American Ethnologist 3: 97

18. Segal, Daniel (2000) Western Civ" and the Staging of History in American

Higher Education The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Jun.,

2000), pp. 770 -- 805 doi:10.2307/2651809

19. Seymour-Smith, Charlotte, Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology, 1986,

Macmillan, New York.

20. Stocking Jr., George W., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, 1968, The Free Press, New York.

21. Stocking Jr., George W., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888 -- 1951,

1995, The University of Wisconsin Press.

22. Winthrop, Robert H., Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology, 1991,

Greenwood Press, New York.

23. Mery, Sophie, et al. 2007 A pottery workshop with flint tools on blades knapped with copper at Nausharo (Indus civilisation, ca. 2500 BC). Journal of Archaeological Science 34:1098-1116.

24. Possehl, Gregory L. 1997 The transformation of the Indus civilization. Journal of World Prehistory 11(4):425-472.

25. Possehl, Gregory L. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A contemporary perspective..

Altamira Press, Walnut Creek California.

26. Ratnagar, Shereen 2001 The Bronze Age: Unique instance of a pre-industrial world system? Current Anthropology 42(3):351-379.

27. Reade, Julian 2001 Assyrian King-Lists, the Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus

Origins. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 60(1):1-29.

Hatch, Elvin, Theories of Man and Culture, 1973, Columbia University Press, New York

Mery, Sophie, et al. 2007 A pottery workshop with flint tools on blades knapped with copper at Nausharo (Indus civilisation, ca. 2500 BC). Journal of Archaeological Science 34:1098-1116

Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994, ISBN 0-631-18206-3

Hays, H.R., From Ape to Angel: An Informal History of Social Anthropology, 1965, Alfred A. Knopf, New York

Winthrop, Robert H., Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology, 1991, Greenwood Press, New York

Johnson, Allen W. And Earle, Timothy, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, 1987, Stanford University Press

Possehl, Gregory L. 1997 The transformation of the Indus civilization. Journal of World Prehistory 11(4):425-472

Stocking Jr., George W., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology 1888 -- 1951, 1995, The University of Wisconsin Press

Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois

Stocking Jr., George W., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology, 1968, The Free Press, New York

Possehl, Gregory L. 2002. The Indus Civilization: A contemporary perspective.. Altamira Press, Walnut Creek California

Seymour-Smith, Charlotte, Macmillan Dictionary of Anthropology, 1986, Macmillan, New York

Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994, ISBN 0-631-18206-3

Hatch, Elvin, Theories of Man and Culture, 1973, Columbia University Press, New York

Harris, Marvin, the Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture, 1968, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York

Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois

Segal, Daniel (2000) Western Civ" and the Staging of History in American Higher Education The American Historical Review, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Jun., 2000), pp. 770 -- 805 doi:10.2307/2651809

Graber, Robert B., A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, 1995, Thomas Jefferson University Press, Kirksville, MO

Morgan, John Henry, In the Beginning: The Paleolithic Origins of Religious Consciousness 2007 Cloverdale Books, South Bend. ISBN 978-1-929569-41-0

Raoul Naroll and William T. Divale. 1976. Natural Selection in Cultural Evolution: Warfare vs. Peaceful Diffusion. American Ethnologist 3: 97 -- 128

Kaplan, David and Manners, Robert, Culture Theory, 1972, Waveland Press, Inc., Prospect Heights, Illinois

Mesoudi, A. (2007). Using the methods of experimental social psychology to study cultural evolution. Journal of Social, Evolutionary & Cultural Psychology, 1(2), 35 -- 58. Full text

Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective (First ed.). Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009, Yale University Press, USA and London

Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective (First ed.). Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0

Sztompka, Piotr, The Sociology of Social Change, Blackwell Publishers, 1994, ISBN 0-631-18206-3

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009, Yale University Press, USA and London

Kuklick, Henrika, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885 -- 1945, 1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Graber, Robert B., A Scientific Model of Social and Cultural Evolution, 1995, Thomas Jefferson University Press, Kirksville, MO

Trigger, Bruce, Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (New Perspectives on the Past), Blackwell Publishers, 1998, ISBN 1-55786-977-4

Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00559-0

Kuklick, Henrika, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885 -- 1945, 1991, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Evans-Pritchard, Sir Edward, a History of Anthropological Thought, 1981, Basic Books, Inc., New York

Korotayev, Andrey (2004). World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-cultural Perspective (First ed.). Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0

Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: URSS, 2006. ISBN 5-484-00559-0

Ratnagar, Shereen 2001 The Bronze Age: Unique instance of a pre-industrial world system? Current Anthropology 42(3):351-379

Stocking, George, Victorian Anthropology, Free Press, 1991, ISBN 0-02-931551-4

Trigger, Bruce, Sociocultural Evolution: Calculation and Contingency (New Perspectives on the Past), Blackwell Publishers, 1998, ISBN 1-55786-977-4

Reade, Julian 2001 Assyrian King-Lists, the Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus Origins. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 60(1):1-29