Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain (including space, see space exploration) for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans. In human history, its peak is arguably seen during the Age of Discovery for Europe's contact with the rest of the world, and major explorations after the Age of Discovery for scientific exploration in the modern era.

Other uses

The term may also be used metaphorically, for example persons may speak of exploring the internet, sexuality, etc. In scientific research, exploration is one of three purposes of empirical research (the other two being description and explanation). Exploration is the attempt to develop an initial, rough understanding of some phenomenon.

Notable explorers

1550 B.C. to 300 B.C.

The Phoenicians (1550 B.C. - 300 B.C.), traded throughout the Mediterranean Sea and Asia Minor, and many of their routes are still unknown today. They may even have been to Britain because of the tin that was found in a few of their wares. The Phoenicians traveled far and wide, some scientists even speculate that they traveled all the way to Central America, although this is disputed. Even Queen Dido, in the Virgil's Aeneid, was a Phoenician from the Asia Minor who sailed to North Africa for safety.

4th century BC

Pytheas (380 – ''c.'' 310 BC) – Greek explorer. First to circumnavigate Great Britain and to explore Germany. Reached ''Thule'', most commonly thought to be the Shetland Islands or Iceland.

3rd century BC

Xu Fu (b. 255 BC) – Chinese court sorcerer who led two voyages to the Eastern Seas in 219 BC and 210 BC.

2nd century BC

Zhang Qian – Chinese imperial envoy to Central Asia who helped established the Silk Road.

5th century

Brendan the Navigator (c. 484 – 577) – Irish monk, allegedly discovered Iceland and America in the 6th century.

8th century

Dicuil (born 8th century) – Irish monk and geographer, author of "De mensura Orbis terrae".

The Papar – Irish monks who lived in Iceland, 8th-9th centuries, before the Vikings.

10th century

Ahmad ibn Fadlan – 10th century Iraqi explorer.

Erik the Red (950–1003) – Norwegian Viking explorer. After being cast out from Iceland, he sailed to Greenland and settled there.

Leif Ericson (980–1020) – Icelandic explorer. Believed to have been the first European to land in North America.

13th century

Friar Julian (traveled in 1235) – Hungarian Dominican friar.

Marco Polo (1254–1324) – Venetian explorer.

14th century

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) – Moroccan explorer.

Wang Dayuan (fl. 1311–1350) – Chinese explorer who made two major trips by ship. During 1328–1333, he sailed along the South China Sea and visited many places in Southeast Asia and reached as far as South Asia, landing in Sri Lanka and India. In 1334–1339 he visited North Africa and East Africa.

James of Ireland (fl. 1316–1330) – Irish companion of Odoric of Pordenone.

Simon FitzSimon (fl. 1323) – Irish author of a ''itenerum'' through Egypt and the Holy Land.

Zheng He (1371–1433) – Chinese admiral who made seven voyages to Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia and Thailand.

15th century

Afanasy Nikitin (? - 1472) - Russian traveler and merchant. One of the first Europeans to travel to and document his visit to India.

João Fernandes Lavrador (1445? – 1501) – Portuguese explorer. First European reaching Labrador/Newfoundland. Fernandes charted the coasts of Southwestern Greenland and of adjacent Northeastern North America around 1498. In 1501, Fernandes set sail again in discovery of lands and was never heard from again.

John Cabot (c. 1450–1499) – Italian explorer for England. Discovered Newfoundland and claimed it for the Kingdom of England.

Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450–1500) – Portuguese explorer. He sailed from Portugal and reached the Cape of Good Hope.

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) – Genoese explorer for Spain. Sailed west in 1492 attempting to reach Asia, but instead arrived in the "New World" of the Americas.

Amerigo Vespucci (c. 1454–1512) – Italian explorer for Spain and Portugal. Sailed in 1499 and 1502. He explored the east coast of South America.

Juan Ponce de León (c. 1460–1521) – Spanish explorer. He explored Florida while attempting to locate the legendary Fountain of Youth.

Piri Reis (c. 1465/1470–1554/1555) – Ottoman explorer.

Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467 – c. 1520) – Portuguese explorer, generally regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil.

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1524) – Portuguese explorer. The first European to sail from Europe to India by rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

16th century

Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519) – Spanish explorer and discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. The first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama and view the Pacific ocean from American shores.

Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541) – Spanish explorer. Conquered the Inca Empire.

Juan Sebastián Elcano (1476–1526) – Spanish explorer. Completed the first circumnavigation of the globe in a single expedition after its captain, Magellan, was killed.

Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) – Portuguese explorer for Spain. Initiated the first circumnavigation of the globe in a single expedition. Sailed through Strait of Magellan and named Pacific Ocean. Died in the Philippines after claiming them for Spain.

Giovanni da Verrazzano (c. 1485–1528) – Italian explorer for France. Explored the northeast coast of America, from about present day South Carolina to Newfoundland.

Hernán Cortés (1485–1545) – Spanish explorer. Conquered the Aztec Empire for Spain.

García Jofre de Loaísa (1490 – 1526) - Spanish explorer. First navigator to sail from Europe to the Western coast of North America. Crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico, exploring the Philippines and Spice Islands. His expedition was the second to circumnavigate the world (after Magellan and Elcano in 1522) though Loaísa died before completing it.

Jacques Cartier (1491–1557) – French explorer. Discovered Canada.

Hernando de Soto (c. 1496–1542) – Spanish explorer. Explored Florida, mainly northwest Florida, and discovered the Mississippi River.

Andrés de Urdaneta (1498 – 1568) was a Spanish circumnavigator, explorer and Augustinian friar. As a navigator he achieved the second world circumnavigation in 1536, and discovered the eastern martime path across the Pacific (from Asia to America) also known as Urdaneta's Route or ''tornaviaje'' (Spanish).

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (c. 1510–1554) – Spanish explorer. Searched for the Seven Cities of Gold and discovered the Grand Canyon in the process.

Francisco de Orellana (1511–1546) – Spanish explorer, in 1541–42 sailed the length of the Amazon River.

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532–1592) – Spanish explorer of the Pacific.

Yermak Timofeyevich (c. 1532-1585) - Russian cossack leader and explorer. Conquered the Khanate of Siberia.

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540–1596) – English explorer. The first English captain to sail around the world and survive.

Alvaro de Mendaña de Neyra (1541–1596) – Spanish explorer of the Pacific. His first expedition in 1567 discovered Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands, and his second expedition (1595) discovered the Marquesas Islands.

Yñigo Ortiz de Retez (1545-?) was a Spanish maritime explorer. His expedition navigated the Pacific including the northern coastline of New Guinea bestowing the island's name (''Nueva Guinea'' in Spanish).

Willem Barentsz (1550–1597) – Dutch navigator and explorer, leader of early expeditions to the far north.

Pedro Páez (1564–1622) – Spanish missionary was the first European who saw and described the source of the Blue Nile.

17th century

Luis Váez de Torres (born c. 1565; fl. 1607) – Spanish or Portuguese navigator. Explored the Pacific in the service of the Spanish Crown. As part of the Queiros expedition of 1606, he discovered the Straits that bear his name in northern Australia.

Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1565–1614) – Portuguese navigator at the service of the Spanish Crown. Explored the South Pacific in the early 17th century. Discovered present-day Vanuatu and Pitcairn Islands in 1606. Some historians believe he also discovered Australia.

Henry Hudson (1611) – English explorer. Explored much of the North Atlantic, including Labrador, the coast of Greenland, and Hudson Bay. Presumed dead in a 1611 mutiny of his own crew.

António de Andrade (1580–1634) – Portuguese explorer. First European reaching Tibet. His reports were the only account of the Tibet culture and geography until the second half of the 18th century.

Samuel de Champlain (1567/80-1635). - French explorer. He explored parts of Canada.

Semyon Dezhnyov (1605 – 1672). - Russian explorer of Siberia and the first European to sail through the Bering Strait.

Yerofey Khabarov (1603-1671). - Russian entrepreneur, best known for his exploring the Amur river region.

Abel Tasman (1603–1659) – Dutch explorer. Discovered New Zealand and Tasmania.

Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682) – Ottoman traveller.

Edmond Halley (1656–1742) -In 1690, Halley patented the diving bell. In 1698, Halley was given the command of the HMS Paramour, a 52-foot Pink, so that he could carry out investigations in the South Atlantic into the laws governing the variation of the compass.

18th century

Vitus Bering (1681–1741) – Danish explorer. Explored the Siberian Far East and Alaska and claimed it for Russia.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (May 26, 1689 – August 21, 1762) – explored Turkey.

Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) – Swedish biologist. His six month exploration of Lapland in 1732 described about one hundred previously unknown plants.

Juan José Pérez Hernández (1725-1775) - Spanish explorer. First European to sail the American Pacific Northwest.

James Cook (1728–1779) – British naval captain. Explored much of the Pacific including New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii.

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse (23 August 1741 – ?1788) – French naval captain. Lapérouse was appointed in 1785 by Louis XVI and his minister of marine, the Marquis de Castries, to lead an expedition around the world. He vanished in Oceania with the remains of his expedition being found later in 1826 at the island of Vanikoro, which is part of the Santa Cruz group of islands. Lapérouse was a significant French figure of the Age of Enlightenment.

Esteban Jose Martinez (1742-1798) - Spanish explorer and navigator. Played a key role in the exploration of the Pacific Northwest. He established the first Spanish settlement in the region: ''Santa Cruz de Nuca'' on Nootka Sound.

Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (1744-1794) - Spanish navigator. Explored the Northwest Coast of America as far north as present day Alaska. Vancouver Island was originally named "Quadra and Vancouver Island" after Bodega y Quadra and George Vancouver.

Alessandro Malaspina (1754–1810) – Italian explorer. Explored the Pacific and the west coast of North America in the service of Spanish Crown.

Salvador Fidalgo (1756-1803) - Spanish navigator and explorer of the Pacific Northwest. His expedition explored northern Canada and Alaska including Cordova Bay and Port Valdez in Prince William Sound, as well as Kodiak Island and Nanwalek, southwest of Anchorage.

Alexander MacKenzie (1764–1820) – Scottish-Canadian explorer who in 1789, looking for the Northwest Passage, followed the river now named after him to the Arctic Ocean and then in 1793 crossed the Rockies and reached the Pacific in 1793, thus beating Lewis and Clark by 12 years.

José María Narváez (1768-1840) Spanish explorer and navigator, notable for his expeditions in the Pacific Northwest of present-day Canada. He was the first Spaniard to make contact with a large contingent of Russians in Alaska.

Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) – German explorer and scientist whose work was foundational to the field of biogeography.

Mungo Park (1771–1806) – the first Westerner to discover the Niger River; he was the first Western explorer to reach Timbuktu, though he didn't live to share his discovery with the world.

19th century

Ivan Krusenstern (1770-1846) - Russian explorer, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the earth.

Captain Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) – American explorer and field scientist who led the Lewis and Clark Expedition into the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest in 1804–1806.

Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) – British explorer, surveyed the coast of the Polar Sea between 1819 and 1824; died on his final Arctic expedition in 1845.

Mikhail Lazarev (1788-1851) - Russian fleet commander and explorer who discovered Antarctica.

Edward Sabine(October 14, 1788 – May 26, 1883) – Irish participant in the Ross and Perry Arctic expeditions.

Sacagawea (c. 1788 – December 20, 1812) – accompanied and assisted Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back.

Thomas Coulter (1793–1843) – Irish botanist and explorer of Mexico and Arizona.

Charles Wilkes (April 3, 1798 – February 8, 1877) – American naval officer and explorer who commanded the United States Exploring Expedition.

George Fletcher Moore (10 December 1798 – 30 December 1886) – early Irish explorer of Australia.

Pierre-Jean De Smet (1801–1873) – Belgian missionary and explorer in North America.

David Livingstone (1813–1873) – Scottish missionary and explorer in central Africa. He was the first European to see Victoria Falls, which he named in honour of Queen Victoria.

John Rae (1813–1893) – Scottish doctor in Northern Canada. He discovered a Northwest Passage and reported the fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Robert O'Hara Burke (1821 – c. 28 June 1861) – Irish leader of the Burke and Wills expedition.

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) – English explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat; known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures; according to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian, and African languages.

Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky (1827 – 1914) - Russian geographer and explorer. He discovered the Altay Mountains and Tian Shan.

Isabella Bird (October 15, 1831 – October 7, 1904) – the first woman inducted into the Royal Geographical Society; she travelled extensively, exploring the Far East, Central Asia, and the American West.

Nikolai Przhevalsky (1839—1888) - Russian geographer and explorer of Central and Eastern Asia.

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) – Welsh journalist and explorer in central Africa best remembered for his search for David Livingstone, and upon finding him saying: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza (1852–1905) - Franco-Italian explorer and colonial administrator, known for his humanitarian principles and egalitarian treatment of native workers in French Equatorial Africa. He founded the city later named Brazzaville in his honor.

Otto Sverdrup (1854–1930) – Norwegian explorer. Joined Fridtjof Nansen across Greenland in 1888 and captain on the Fram on the polar drift in 1893–1896 and the 2nd Fram expedition in 1898–1902. Mapped the Northernmost part of Canada in 1898–1902.

Harry De Windt (1856–1933) – British explorer and member of the Royal Geographical Society. Travelled overland from Paris to New York in 1901–1902. Writer of books about his many expeditions.

George Comer (1858–1937) – American polar explorer. The ''Comer Strait'' of northern Southampton Island and the ''Gallinula comeri'' flightless bird of Gough Island were named in his honor.

Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) – Norwegian explorer, scientist and diplomat. He was the first to cross the Greenland ice cap in 1888 and drifted across the Arctic ocean with the Fram in 1893–1896 where he attempted to reach the North Pole with Hjalmar Johansen.

Mary Kingsley (October 13, 1862 – June 3, 1900) – explored the Upper Ogawe River in Gabon and journeyed alone into unknown regions of the Congo jungle.

Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) – Norwegian explorer. He led the first successful Antarctic expedition between 1910 and 1912. He was also the first ever person to successfully traverse the North West Passage.

Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) – Anglo-Irish Explorer, noted for his ill-fated Endurance expedition to Antarctica.

Hiram Bingham III (1875–1956) – U.S. Senator from Connecticut and explorer best known for uncovering Machu Picchu.

Robert Bartlett (1875–1946) – Newfoundland captain. Led over 40 expeditions to the Arctic, more than anyone before or since. Was the first to sail north of 88° N latitude.

Tom Crean (20 July 1877 – 27 July 1938) – Irish Antarctic explorer.

Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) – Greenlandic polar explorer and anthropologist. Rasmussen was the first to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.

Auguste Piccard (1884–1962) – physicist, balloonist, hydronaut. Explored the stratosphere and the deep sea.

Mulford B. Foster (1888–1978) – American horticulturist known for extensive plant explorations of South America. Collected thousands of species of plants for the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution. Discovered more new species of bromeliads than the previous plants explorers Andre and Glaziou.

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) - US naval officer whose expeditions may have been the first to reach the North Pole and the South Pole by air.

Ahmed Pasha Hassanein (1889–1946) – Egyptian explorer, diplomat, one of two non-European winners of Gold Medal of Royal Geographical Society in 1924, King's chamberlain, fencing participant to 1924 Olympics, photographer, author and discoverer of Jebel Uweinat, and writer of "The Lost Oases" book in three languages.

Freya Stark (January 31, 1893, Paris, France – May 9, 1993) – not only one of the first Western women to travel through the Arabian deserts (Hadhramaut); she often traveled solo into areas where few Europeans, let alone women, had ever been.

20th century

Colonel Noel Andrew Croft (1906–1998) – held the record for the longest self-sustaining journey across the Arctic in the 1930s for 60 years.

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (1919–2008) – New Zealand explorer, together with Tenzing Norgay, the first to climb Mount Everest on May 29, 1953.

Yuri Gagarin (March 9, 1934 – March 27, 1968) – Soviet cosmonaut who on April 12, 1961 became the first man in space and the first human to orbit Earth.

Neil Armstrong (b. August 5, 1930) – American astronaut – First human being to set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

Valentina Tereshkova (b. 1937) – one of the first people in space; first female cosmonaut.

Robert Ballard (b. 1942) – undersea explorer; discovered the shipwreck of the ''RMS Titanic''.

Ranulph Fiennes (b. 7 March 1944) – British adventurer. First journey around the world on its polar axis using surface transport only, covered 52,000 miles and visited both poles by land. First unsupported crossing of Antarctica.

Reinhold Messner (b. September 17, 1944) – Italian mountaineer, first man to climb all the 14 peaks higher than 8,000 meters.

E. Lee Spence (b. 1947) – undersea explorer and pioneer underwater archaeologist: discovered numerous shipwrecks including ''H.L. Hunley'' the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship; and the ''Georgiana,'' said to have been the most powerful Confederate cruiser.

Robyn Davidson (b. September 6, 1950) – the first person to make a solo crossing of the Australian Outback by camel; she also explored the remote desert regions of India.

Michael Asher (b. 1953) – British adventurer. In 1986–7 Michael Asher and his wife, Italian-born photographer and Arabist, Mariantonietta Peru, made the first ever west-east crossing of the Sahara desert by camel and on foot.

Frank Cole (1954–2000) – Canadian adventurer, filmmaker and life extensionist. He was the first North American to cross the Sahara desert in 1990 alone on camel. He was murdered by bandits during a second crossing in 2000.

Kira Salak (b. September 4, 1971) – a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, Salak was the first woman to cross the island of New Guinea; she was also the first person in the world to kayak 600 miles alone to Timbuktu. Salak has done solo exploration to regions such as Borneo, Libya, Iran, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

See also

Adventure

European exploration of Africa

Expedition

Timeline of European exploration

Chronology of European exploration of Asia

Explorers Grand Slam

History of Antarctica

Lists

List of explorations

List of explorers

List of maritime explorers

List of Russian explorers

Types of exploration

Arctic exploration

Cave exploration

Desert exploration

Mineral exploration

Ocean exploration

Space exploration

Urban exploration

References

Further reading

External links

''National Geographic'' Explorer Program

NOAA Ocean Explorer - provides public access to current information on a series of NOAA scientific and educational explorations and activities in the marine environment

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research - formed by the merger of NOAA’s Undersea Research Program (NURP) and the Office of Ocean Exploration (OE)

ar:استكشاف br:Ergerzhadeg da:Opdagelsesrejse de:Expedition es:Exploración eo:Esplorado fr:Exploration gl:Exploración hi:खोजी यात्रा hr:Popis istraživača it:Esploratori he:מגלה ארצות nl:Expeditie (ontdekkingstocht) ja:探検 pt:Exploração sq:Eksplorimi simple:Exploring fi:Tutkimusmatkailija sv:Upptäcktsresa tr:Kâşif ur:استکشاف vi:Thám hiểm yi:עקספלאראציע zh:探险家

thumb|right|400px|The Acropolis, universally viewed as one of the most influential structures in world history, and renowned throughout both the [[Classical_antiquity|Mediterranean and Asiatic ancient worlds. Directly influencing architecture and engineering in Western, Islamic, and Eastern civilizations up to the present day, 2400 years after construction.]] thumb|right|300px|The ancient city of Mohenjo-daro of the Ancient Indus valley civilization, spanning Pakistan, Afghanistan and India is known to be one of the world's earliest cities.

Civilization (or civilisation) is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally urbanized. In classical contexts civilized peoples were called this in contrast to "barbarian" peoples, while in modern contexts civilized peoples have been contrasted to "primitive" peoples.

In modern academic discussions however, there is a tendency to use the term in a less strict way to mean approximately the same thing as "culture" and can therefore refer more broadly to any important and clearly defined human society, particularly in historical discussions. Still, even when used in this second sense, the word is often restricted to apply only to societies that have attained a particular level of advancement, especially the founding of cities, with the word "city" defined in various ways.

The level of advancement of a civilization is often measured by its progress in agriculture, long-distance trade, occupational specialization, and urbanism. Aside from these core elements, civilization is often marked by any combination of a number of secondary elements, including a developed transportation system, writing, standards of measurement (currency, etc.), contract and tort-based legal systems, characteristic art styles (which may pertain to specific cultures), monumental architecture, mathematics, science, sophisticated metallurgy, politics, and astronomy.

Definition

The word ''civilization'' comes from the Latin ''civilis'', meaning ''civil'', related to the Latin ''civis'', meaning ''citizen'', and ''civitas'', meaning ''city'' or ''city-state''.

In the sixth century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian oversaw the consolidation of Roman civil law. The resulting collection is called the ''Corpus Juris Civilis''. In the 11th century, professors at the University of Bologna, Western Europe's first university, rediscovered the ''Corpus Juris Civilis'', and its influence began to be felt across bodies. In 1388, the word ''civil'' appeared in English meaning "of or related to citizens." In 1704, ''civilization'' was used to mean "a law which makes a criminal process into a civil case." ''Civilization'' was not used in its modern sense to mean "the opposite of barbarism" — as contrasted to ''civility'', meaning politeness or civil virtue — until the second half of the 18th century.

According to Emile Benveniste (1954), the earliest written occurrence in English of ''civilisation'' in its modern sense may be found in Adam Ferguson's ''An Essay on the History of Civil Society'' (Edinburgh, 1767 - p. 2): "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation."

It should be noted that this usage incorporates the concept of superiority and maturity of "civilized" existence, as contrasted to "rudeness", which is used to denote coarseness, as in a lack of refinement or "civility."

Before Benveniste's inquiries, the New English Dictionary quoted James Boswell's conversation with Samuel Johnson concerning the inclusion of ''Civilization'' in Johnson's dictionary:

Benveniste demonstrated that previous occurrences could be found, which explained the quick adoption of Johnson's definition. In 1775 the dictionary of Ast defined ''civilization'' as "the state of being civilized; the act of civilizing", and the term was frequently used by Adam Smith in ''An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'' (1776). Beside Smith and Ferguson, John Millar also used it in 1771 in his ''Observations concerning the distinction of ranks in society''.

The history of the word in English appears to be connected with the parallel development in French, which may be the original source. As the first occurrence of ''civilization'' in French was found by Benveniste in the Marquis de Mirabeau's ''L'Ami des hommes ou traité de la population'' (written in 1756 but published in 1757), Benveniste's query was to know if the English word derived from the French, or if both evolved independently — a question which needed more research. According to him, the word ''civilization'' may in fact have been used by Ferguson as soon as 1759.

Furthermore, Benveniste notes that, contrasted to ''civility'', a static term, ''civilization'' conveys a sense of dynamism. He thus writes that:

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, both during the French revolution, and in English, "civilization" was referred to in the singular, never the plural, because it referred to the progress of mankind as a whole. This is still the case in French. More recently "civilizations" is sometimes used as a synonym for the broader term "cultures" in both popular and academic circles. However, the concepts of civilization and culture are not always considered interchangeable. For example, a small nomadic tribe may be judged not to have a civilization, but it would surely be judged to have a culture (defined as "the arts, customs, habits... beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life").

Civilization is not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization stems from the writings of Rousseau, and particularly his work concerning education, ''Emile''. In this perspective, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accordance with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original prediscursive or prerational natural unity". (See noble savage.) From this notion, a new approach was developed especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder, and later by philosophers such as Nietzsche. This sees cultures (plural) as natural organisms which are not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts" but rather a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful concerning material progress, is seen as un-natural, and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy, and avarice. During World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this approach to civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.

In his book ''The Philosophy of Civilization'', Albert Schweitzer outlined the idea that there are dual opinions within society: one regarding civilization as purely material and another regarding civilization as both ethical and material. He stated that the current world crisis was, then in 1923, due to a humanity having lost the ethical conception of civilization. In this same work, he defined civilization, saying that it "is 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."

Characteristics

Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy, and other cultural traits.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence. Growing food on farms results in a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as irrigation and crop rotation. Grain surpluses have been especially important because they can be stored for a long time. A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides produce food for a living: early civilizations included artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labor and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labor predates plant and animal domestication.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word ''civilization'' is sometimes simply defined as "'living in cities'". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories: ''Hunter-gatherer bands'', which are generally egalitarian.

''Horticultural/pastoral societies'' in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.

''Highly stratified structures'', or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.

''Civilizations,'' with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tariffs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions. To oversimplify, in a village the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat, and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled fairly.

Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state." Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other.

Aided by their division of labor and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.

Through history, successful civilizations have spread, taking over more and more territory, and assimilating more and more previously-uncivilized people. Nevertheless, some tribes or people remain uncivilized even to this day. These cultures are called by some "primitive," a term that is regarded by others as pejorative. "Primitive" implies in some way that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), that it has not changed since the dawn of mankind, though this has been demonstrated not to be true. Specifically, as all of today's cultures are contemporaries, today's so-called primitive cultures are in no way antecedent to those we consider civilized. Many anthropologists use the term "non-literate" to describe these peoples.

Civilization has been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by introducing agriculture and writing to non-literate peoples. Some non-civilized people may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour. But civilization is also spread by the technical, material and social dominance that civilization engenders.

Cultural identity

"Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion, and complex customs associated with the elite.

The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam). Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity.

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler, uses the German word "Kultur," "culture," for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believes a civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the decline of a culture as, "...the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable." Resin found later in the Royal Tombs of Ur it is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.

Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system", a process known as globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic – is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BC. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusades as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.

Future

Political scientist Samuel Huntington has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said, Muhammed Asadi and Amartya Sen. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology. In ''Identity and Violence'' Sen questions if people should be divided along the lines of a supposed 'civilization', defined by religion and culture only. He argues that this ignores the many others identities that make up people and leads to a focus on differences.

Some environmental scientists see the world entering a Planetary Phase of Civilization, characterized by a shift away from independent, disconnected nation-states to a world of increased global connectivity with worldwide institutions, environmental challenges, economic systems, and consciousness. In an attempt to better understand what a Planetary Phase of Civilization might look like in the current context of declining natural resources and increasing consumption, the Global scenario group used scenario analysis to arrive at three archetypal futures: Barbarization, in which increasing conflicts result in either a fortress world or complete societal breakdown; Conventional Worlds, in which market forces or Policy reform slowly precipitate more sustainable practices; and a Great Transition, in which either the sum of fragmented Eco-Communalism movements add up to a sustainable world or globally coordinated efforts and initiatives result in a new sustainability paradigm.

Author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is intrinsically directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in a harmful and destructive fashion.

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist ''(see also: Civilizations and the Future, Space civilization)''.

Fall of civilizations

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general theory.

Edward Gibbon's work ''"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"'' was a well-known and detailed analysis of the fall of Roman civilization. Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD. For Gibbon:-

''"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."''[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173–174.-Chapter XXXVIII: Reign Of Clovis.--Part VI. General Observations On The Fall Of The Roman Empire In The West.]

Theodor Mommsen in his ''"History of Rome (Mommsen)",'' suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay."

Oswald Spengler, in his ''"Decline of the West"'' rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations." Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.

Arnold J. Toynbee in his ''"A Study of History"'' suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.

Joseph Tainter in ''"The Collapse of Complex Societies"'' suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD.

Jared Diamond in his 2005 book ''"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"'' suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.

Peter Turchin in his ''Historical Dynamics'' and Andrey Korotayev ''et al.'' in their ''Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends'' suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. ''Historical Dynamics.'' Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127).

Peter Heather argues in his book ''The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians'' that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others. Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book ''The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization'', shows the real horrors associated with the collapse of a civilization for the people who suffer its effects, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere. Arthur Demarest argues in ''Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization'', using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today. Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "A review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society."

Thomas Homer-Dixon in "''The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization''", considers that the fall in the energy return on investments; the energy expended to energy yield ratio, is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse....

History

Early civilizations

Old Stone Age

New Stone Age

Ancient Near East

*Mesopotamia

*Indus Valley Civilization

*Levant / Canaan

*Bronze Age Anatolia / Aegean

Bronze Age Europe

Bronze Age India

Bronze Age China

Africa

*Ancient Egypt

*Kush

*Axum

Pre-Columbian Americas

* Norte Chico / Caral

* Olmec

* Zapotec civilization

Antiquity (Axial Age)

Karl Jaspers, the German historical philosopher, proposed that the ancient civilizations were affected greatly by an Axial Age in the period between 800 BC-200 BC during which a series of male sages, prophets, religious reformers and philosophers, from China, India, Iran, Israel and Greece, changed the direction of civilizations forever. William H. McNeill proposed that this period of history was one in which culture contact between previously separate civilizations saw the "closure of the oecumene", and led to accelerated social change from China to the Mediterranean, associated with the spread of coinage, larger empires and new religions. This view has recently been championed by Christopher Chase-Dunn and other world systems theorists.

Mediterranean civilizations of the Classical Period

*Ancient Greece

*Ancient Rome

* Hellenistic civilization

Middle East

* Persia since the Achaemenids

* Second Temple Judaism

Ancient India (Maurya Empire, Gupta Empire)

Ancient China (Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty)

Ancient Nomads (Hun Xiongnu, Kok Turk Empire)

Medieval to Early Modern

Christendom

*Western Christianity

*Eastern Christianity

Islamic World

*Islamic Golden Age

*Caliphate

*Mongol-Turkish (Ilkhanate, Timurid Empire)

*Mughal India

*Ottoman Empire

Asia

*Chola, India

*Pallava, India

*Pandiya, India

*Chera Dynasty, India

*Tang China

*Mongol Empire (Yuan)

*Ming China

*Feudal Japan

*Confucian Vietnam

South East Asia

*Funan, Chenla, Champa, Anghor Cambodia

*Dvaravati, Hariphunchai, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya Kingdom, pre Modern Thailand

*Pagan Burma

*Chola, Pallava, Sri Vijaya, Sailendra, Mataram and Majapahit

Meso-American civilizations

* Toltec

* Kingdom of Cusco/Inca Empire

* Aztec civilization

* Maya civilization

African civilizations

*Wagadou

*Mali Empire

*Songhai Empire

*Abyssinia

*Benin Empire

Contemporary

Western World

*Europe

*Anglosphere

*Latin America

Post-Soviet states

*Russia

Islamic world

*Arab world

*Middle East

*North Africa

Eastern world / Far East

*East Asia

**Sinosphere

**Nomadic (Altaic)

*South Asia

*Southeast Asia

Sub-Saharan Africa

See also

Anarcho-primitivism

Barbarian

Civilized core

Cradle of civilization

Culture

History of the world

Human population

Kardashev scale

Mission civilisatrice

Muslim world

Proto-civilization

Western civilization

Notes

References

Clash of Civilizations and information on other civilizations, Discussion and news surrounding the clash and concepts such as dialog, equality, acceptance etc. between civilizations.

BBC on civilization

Wiktionary: civilization, civilize

# ''From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto.'' ISBN 0-306-80304-6 (1987 reprint).

# ''From the Defeat of the Spanish Armada to the Battle of Waterloo.'' ISBN 0-306-80305-4 (1987 reprint).

# ''From the American Civil War to the End of World War II.'' ISBN 0-306-80306-2 (1987 reprint).

Korotayev, Andrey, ''World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective''. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0

Kradin, Nikolay. Archaeological Criteria of Civilization. ''Social Evolution & History'', Vol. 5, No 1 (2006): 89-108. ISSN 1681-4363.

A. Nuri Yurdusev, International Relations and the Philosophy of History: A Civilizational Approach (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

Category:Anthropological categories of peoples Category:Cultural anthropology Category:Cultural history Category:Society Category:Theories of history Category:Sociocultural evolution Category:Cultural geography Category:Culture Category:Civilizations

ar:حضارة an:Civilización az:Sivilizasiya be:Цывілізацыя be-x-old:Цывілізацыя bs:Civilizacija bg:Цивилизация ca:Civilització cs:Civilizace cy:Gwareiddiad da:Civilisation de:Zivilisation et:Tsivilisatsioon el:Πολιτισμός es:Civilización eo:Civilizo eu:Zibilizazio fa:تمدن hif:Sabhyata fr:Civilisation gl:Civilización gan:文明 gu:સંસ્કૃતિ hak:Vùn-mìn ko:문명 hi:सभ्यता hr:Civilizacija id:Peradaban is:Siðmenning it:Civiltà he:ציוויליזציה kn:ನಾಗರೀಕತೆ ka:ცივილიზაცია kk:Шағын (жергілікті) өркениеттер sw:Ustaarabu krc:Цивилизация la:Civilizatio lv:Civilizācija lb:Zivilisatioun lt:Civilizacija hu:Civilizáció mg:Haifomba ml:നാഗരികത arz:حضاره ms:Tamadun mwl:Ceblizaçon mn:Соёл иргэншил nl:Beschaving ja:文明 nap:Civìltà no:Sivilisasjon nn:Sivilisasjon oc:Civilizacion uz:Tamaddun pnb:رہتل pl:Cywilizacja pt:Civilização ro:Civilizație qu:Hawaykawsay rue:Цівілізація ru:Цивилизация sah:Цивилизация si:ශිෂ්ටාචාරය simple:Civilization sk:Civilizácia sl:Civilizacija sr:Цивилизација sh:Civilizacija fi:Sivilisaatio sv:Civilisation tl:Kabihasnan ta:நாகரிகம் te:నాగరికత th:อารยธรรม tr:Uygarlık uk:Цивілізація ur:تہذیب vec:Siviltà vi:Văn minh fiu-vro:Tsivilisats'uun war:Sibilisasyón wo:Xay yi:ציוויליזאציע zh-yue:文明 bat-smg:Cėvėlėzacėjė zh:文明