In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French Revolution, "civilization" was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation". The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760s, again from French. Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress". In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the early modern period. The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé ("civilized"), from Latin civilis ("civil"), related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city"). The emergence of table manners and other forms of etiquette and self-restraint are presented as a characteristic of civilized society by Norbert Elias in his book The Civilizing Process (1939). The End of Dinner by Jules-Alexandre Grün (1913). The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite. The word “civilization” relates to the Latin word “ civitas” or “ city.” This is why the most basic definition of the word “civilization” is “a society made up of cities.” Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings. Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies, or hunter-gatherers however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. Ĭivilizations are additionally characterized by other features, including agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, technological advancement, taxation, regulation, and specialization of labour. Ī civilization ( British English: civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system). Ancient Egypt provides an example of an early culture considered a civilization.
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