Merchants on the silk road transported goods and traded at bazaars or caravanserai along the way. They traded goods such as silk, spices, tea, ivory, cotton, wool, precious metals, and ideas. Use these resources to explore this ancient trade route with your students. Ancient Greek politics, philosophy, art and scientific achievements greatly influenced Western civilizations today. One example of their legacy is the Olympic Games. Use the videos, media, reference materials, and other resources in this collection to teach about ancient Greece, its role in modern-day democracy, and civic engagement.
A civilization is a complex human society that may have certain characteristics of cultural and technological development. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Skip to content. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. Article Vocabulary. Civilization describes a complex way of life that came about as people began to develop networks of urban settlements.
The earliest civilizations developed between and BCE, when the rise of agriculture and trade allowed people to have surplus food and economic stability. Many people no longer had to practice farming, allowing a diverse array of professions and interests to flourish in a relatively confined area. Civilizations first appeared in Mesopotamia what is now Iraq and later in Egypt. Civilizations ultimately developed on every continent except Antarctica.
All civilizations have certain characteristics. These include: 1 large population centers; 2 monumental architecture and unique art styles; 3 shared communication strategies; 4 systems for administering territories; 5 a complex division of labor; and 6 the division of people into social and economic classes. Rural residents of civilizations may include farmers, fishers, and traders, who regularly sell their goods and services to urban residents.
The huge urban center of Teotihuacan, in modern-day Mexico, for example, had as many as , residents between and CE. The development of the Teotihuacano civilization was made possible in part by the rich agricultural land surrounding the city.
As land was cultivate d, fewer farmers could supply more food staple s, such as corn and beans, to more people. Much of the wealth and power of Teotihuacan was due to excavating and trading the rich deposits of obsidian around the city. Obsidian is a hard volcanic rock that was highly valued as a cutting tool.
Teotihuacano merchant s traded exported obsidian to surrounding cultures in exchange for goods and services imported to Teotihuacano settlements. All civilizations work to preserve their legacy by building large monument s and structures 2. This is as true today as it was thousands of years ago.
For example, the ancient monuments at Great Zimbabwe are still consistently used as a symbol of political power in the modern nation of Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe, constructed between and , describes the ruins of the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. At its peak, Great Zimbabwe was inhabited by more than 10, people and was part of a trading network that extended from the Maghreb , through the eastern coast of Africa, and as far east as India and China.
Great Zimbabwe is a testament to the sophistication and ingenuity of ancestor s of the local Shona people. Buildings are not the only monuments that define civilizations. The distinct artistic style of Great Zimbabwe included representations of native animals carved in soapstone.
Shared communication 3 is another element that all civilizations share. Shared communication may include spoken language; alphabets; numeric systems; signs, ideas, and symbols; and illustration and representation. Shared communication allows the infrastructure necessary for technology , trade, cultural exchange , and government to be developed and shared throughout the civilization.
The Inca civilization, for example, had no written script that we know of, but its complex khipu system of accounting allowed the government to conduct census es of its population and production across the vast stretch of the Andes mountains.
A khipu is a recording device made of a series of strings knotted in particular patterns and colors. Written language in particular allows civilizations to record their own history and everyday events—crucial for understanding ancient cultures.
The world's oldest known written language is Sumerian, which developed in Mesopotamia around BCE. The most familiar form of early Sumerian writing was called cuneiform , and was made up of different collections of wedge triangle shapes. The earliest Sumerian writing was record-keeping. Just like written records of modern civilizations, Sumerian cuneiform kept track of tax es, grocery bills, and laws for things like theft.
Written language was a key part of shared communication during the Islamic Golden Age , which flourished in southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia from the seventh to the 13th centuries.
All civilizations rely on government administration —bureaucracy. To rule an area that large, the Romans, based in what is now central Italy, needed an effective system of government administration and infrastructure. Romans used a variety of methods to administer their republic and, later, empire.
Engineering , for instance, was a key part of Roman administration. Romans built a network of roads so that communication between far-away territories was as efficient as possible.
Roads also made travel by the Roman military much easier. Romans built structures of their civilization everywhere they went: aqueduct s supplied freshwater to towns for improved sanitation and hygiene , for example. Language also played a part in Roman infrastructure. Romans spread the Latin language throughout southern Europe. The so-called "Romance languages" Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, and Italian are called that because they all developed from the Roman language: Latin.
Having a similar language made communication and leadership easier for Rome in its far-flung territories. Roman leaders relied on a series of legal codes for administration.
These codes helped structure laws between different parts of Roman territory, as well as between rich and poor, men and women, slave and free. Roman laws included restrictions on marriage, ownership of land, and access to professions such as priesthoods. Roman law was largely public , and jurists created such formalities as legal language and procedure that would define European law for centuries.
Finally, Romans used local leaders, as well as Romans, to administer the law in their territories. Residents were more familiar with their own leaders, and more likely to follow their announcements.
Israeli leaders worked with Roman authorities in the Roman territory of Palestine, for example, while British leaders often worked with Romans on the island of Great Britain. Some people born in Roman territories eventually became Roman emperors: The emperor Constantine, for instance, was born in what is now Serbia; the emperor Hadrian may have been born in what is now Spain. This interaction reduced conflict between Rome and its territories.
Civilizations are marked by complex divisions of labor 5. This means that different people perform specialized tasks. In a purely agricultural society, members of the community are largely self-sufficient, and can provide food, shelter, and clothing for themselves.
In a complex civilization, farmers may cultivate one type of crop and depend on other people for other foods, clothing, shelter, and information. Civilizations that depend on trade are specially marked by divisions of labor. The city of Timbuktu, in what is now Mali, was an important trading center for several African civilizations. Residents of Timbuktu specialized in trading such goods as gold, ivory, or slaves.
Other residents provided food or shelter for trade caravan s traveling on camels from the Sahara Desert. The urban center of Timbuktu was also a center of learning. Its division of labor included not only merchants, but doctors, religious leaders, and artists. The last element that is key to the development of civilizations is the division of people into class es 6. This is a complex idea that can be broken down into two parts: income and type of work performed.
Changing classes has traditionally been difficult and happens over generation s. Classes can mean groups of people divided by their income.
In medieval civilizations of Europe, there were fewer economic classes. Kings and queens had enormous amounts of money and land.
Serf s, or people who worked the land, had almost nothing. Eventually, a merchant economic class developed. Class can also refer to the type of work people perform. There are many divisions of social class. Social class is often associated with economic class, but not strictly defined by it. In the ancient civilization of China, there were four major types of social classes.
Scholars and political leaders known as shi were the most powerful social class. Farmers and agricultural workers nong were the next most-powerful group. Six of the most important characteristics are: cities, government, religion, social structure, writing and art. Politically, both Egypt and Mesopotamia had a government with one main ruler, but Egypt had a centralized government with a pharaoh, while Mesopotamia had a decentralized government with a king.
Socially, both civilizations were patriarchal, but Egypt was more lenient towards women while Mesopotamia was stricter. A civilization is a complex human society, usually made up of different cities, with certain characteristics of cultural and technological development.
Still, most anthropologists agree on some criteria to define a society as a civilization. First, civilizations have some kind of urban settlements and are not nomadic.
Pure, successor to the equational language Q, is a dynamically typed, functional programming language based on term rewriting.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. However, there are many societies that scholars consider civilizations that do not meet all of the criteria above.
For example, the Incan Empire was a large civilization with a government and social hierarchy. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society. National Geographic Society. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service.
If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service.
Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. Egypt was a vast kingdom of the ancient world.
0コメント