Is there a specific list or order of advances that a civilzation must make to evolve? I know that some didn’t have the wheel (I believe the Big Bossman himself answered this) but did that retard their growth and development, for example? The printing press had an enormous impact, but what if it hadn’t been invented? Or was it inevitable? I realize that there are a couple of questions here, but I have an issue with self-clarity. 
though not apparently with spelling… civilization :smack:
You need to watch some Connections.
I think the first is the rule of law; so you don’t have to worry about your neighbor bashing you over the head and taking all your sheep. This of course implies some sort of governmental apparatus to enforce the laws.
I’d say agriculture and language are the two most important because it’s difficult for your civilization to thrive without:
- A food surplus.
- A method of transmiting your culture and knowledge between people and generations.
I think everything else (including rule of law) stems from those two advances.
I’d say agriculture and language are the two most important because it’s difficult for your civilization to thrive without:
- A food surplus.
- A method of transmiting your culture and knowledge between people and generations.
I think everything else (including rule of law) stems from those two advances.
There used to be a list, I think 7 attributes of “Civillization.” Lemme think it was:
Written Language
Monumental Architecture
Agriculture
Astronomy
long-distance Trade
?Medecine?
?Mathematics?
Later, many exceptions were found (example: Incas never had written language) so that particular list was basically discarded.
"In 1936, the archeologist V. Gordon Childe published his book Man Makes Himself. Childe identified several elements which he believed were essential for a civilization to exist. He included: the plow, wheeled cart and draft animals, sailing ships, the smelting of copper and bronze, a solar calendar, writing, standards of measurement, irrigation ditches, specialized craftsmen, urban centers and a surplus of food necessary to support non-agricultural workers who lived within the walls of the city. Childe’s list concerns human achievements and pays less attention to human organization.
Another historian agreed with Childe but added that a true definition of civilization should also include money collected through taxes, a privileged ruling class, a centralized government and a national religious or priestly class. Such a list, unlike Childe’s, highlights human organization. In 1955, Clyde Kluckhohn argued that there were three essential criteria for civilization: towns containing more than 5000 people, writing, and monumental ceremonial centers. Finally, the archeologist and anthropologist Robert M. Adams argued for a definition of civilization as a society with functionally interrelated sets of social institutions: class stratification based on the ownership and control of production, political and religious hierarchies complementing each other in the central administration of territorially organized states and lastly, a complex division of labor, with skilled workers, soldiers and officials existing alongside the great mass of peasant producers."
Some of my favorite Basics for civilization.
Trustworthy money. (Speaking of Connections, ep. 1.) Along with decent government is a key to developing commerce. At least 90 percent of human history is idiots in government putting themselves ahead of their country and screwing all this up. Obviously it is still happening.
Writing is also important to commerce. Writing developed in many areas mainly to support recordkeeping and trade (and taxes). It doesn’t have to be Elizabethan sonnets. Just names, numbers, dates and common nouns.
For Eurasia, the horse played a key role several times. First introduction, then with chariot, then improvements in saddles and weaponary for horsemen such as the Mongol bow, etc. *
An “upwardly mobile” society always does better in the long run. Caste systems are bad, they can’t adapt to new things going on across the border.
- What happened with sub-Sahara Africe and horses anyway? Why didn’t the Zulus have horses?