The word civilisation comes from the Latin word civis, meaning citizen, and civitas, meaning city.
A civilisation pertains to
organised social and political structure, while culture focuses on shared beliefs, values, and customs.
The oldest civilisations are Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient India, and Ancient China.
A civilisation is a complex human society that has certain features. These are: Living in settled organised groups like towns, not in small tribes or isolated family groups, division of labor, some form of keeping records, social stratification, a written script, central government providing infrastructure and administration, division of labour, with people working on specialised tasks, agriculture, monuments like Egyptian Pyramids.
Civilization first appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt by c. 3000 BCE, India by c. 2800 BCE, China by about c. 1500 BCE.
The Fertile Crescent (circa 7500 BCE), often called the “cradle of civilization”, which stretches from parts of modern Palestine and Israel through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq to the Zagros Mountains in Iran, are the
oldest areas in the world where agriculture was practiced and probably the first where the first sedentary farming villages existed.
Mesopotamia, centered between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (present-day Iraq), developed one of the first written scripts around 3000 BCE, using wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets. Excavations have revealed human
settlements dating to 10,000 BCE in Mesopotamia.
Ancient Egyptian civilisation in northeastern Africa dates from the 4th millennium BCE. This civilisation lasted for almost 30 centuries. Hieroglyphics, the writing system invented in Egypt, emerged around 5000 years ago.
The Indus River Valley Civilization (Harappan Civilization), 3300-1300 BCE, extended from modern-day northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan. This civilisation is noted for its urban panning with baked brick houses, complex drainage systems and water supply systems.
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| Excavated ruins of Mohenjo-daro, Sindh province, Pakistan, showing the Great Bath in the foreground. Mohenjo-daro, on the right bank of the Indus River, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first site in South Asia to be so declared. Saqib Qayyum |
Ancient China had various distinct civilisations and ethnic groups, including the Yellow River civilization, the Yangtze civilization, and Liao civilization. Millet agriculture in China dates to around 7000 BCE.
These Chinese civilisations had craftsmen and administrators, and the earliest form of proto-writing in China were the Jiahu symbols (6600 BCE).
