Gibbon’s work is considered the foundation for the modern study of ancient Rome, and his methodology and use of primary sources became a model for future historians. One such person was Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), a British historian and member of the British parliament who became famous for his six-volume work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 17. Their concept of what constitutes a civilization was widely accepted. Well into the twentieth century and even today, most of the people who wrote about civilization or civilizations in their published papers and books are white males of European ancestry. But the application of the word “civilization” historically has not been evenhanded, especially with regard to societies outside of Europe and the Mediterranean.Įarly in the development of the term, historians and others used labels such as “civilization” and “civilized society” broadly to differentiate between societies they found culturally superior and those they found culturally inferior. The Abbasid Caliphate-which controlled Iran, Iraq, the whole Arabian Peninsula, and much of North Africa at the height of its power in the ninth century CE-gave rise to a period called the Golden Age of Islam that saw an astounding flowering or arts, music, literature, science, and technology. The Aksum Empire (160 CE to 960 CE), in what is now Ethiopia, was a wealthy society with impressive architecture, a writing system, a large capital city, international commerce, and military might. and created beautiful bronze and jade works. It had a strong government seated in a capital and a formidable military, thanks to their development of the chariot and use of bronze weapons. The Shang Dynasty of China (1600 BCE to 1046 BCE) is credited with inventing the earliest form of writing in China. By the late 1700s, scholars started applying criteria to what made a society “civilized.” In general, they believed that: civilizations are urban rather than nomadic there is a division of labor agriculture, science, technology, commerce, literature, and art are developed class structure and government exist.īy this definition, there are many ancient societies that could be called civilizations. The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “civitas” or “city.” This is why the most literal definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.” The word “civilization” was first used in France in the mid-eighteenth century, but it was not used to categorize societies. To understand why scholars are careful with the word civilization, and why people disagree about what it means, it helps to get back to its etymological root. Most historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists working today feel that the word is problematic because of the way the label has been used to set up harmful oppositions among world societies, with “civilized” societies being seen as superior to “non-civilized” societies. Scholars often differ over how to define “civilization” and how to categorize societies based on that definition – or whether to categorize them at all.
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