Civilization describes a complex way of life that came about as people began to develop networks of urban settlements. The earliest civilizations developed between 4000 and 3000 B.C.E., when the rise of agriculture and trade allowed people to have surplus food and economic stability. Many people no longer had to practice ...

While modern civilizations extend to every continent except Antarctica, most scholars place the earliest cradles of civilizations—in other words, where civilizations first emerged—in modern-day Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru and Mexico, beginning between approximately 4000 and 3000 B.C. These ancient complex societies, ...

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. Contents 1 History of the concept

The word 'civilization' was first used in eighteenth-century France, but the western idea of a civilized society dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. During the classical period, Greeks began to see themselves as not just different from, but better than, other peoples. When Herodotus, writing in the mid-fifth century ...

In many parts of the world, early civilizations formed when people began coming together in urban settlements. However, defining what civilization is, and what societies fall under that designation, is a hotly contested argument, even among today’s anthropologists. The word “ civilization ” relates to the Latin word ...