Essays or projects that I am proud of

(Part 1) I had to rewrite this essay the first part is the original

Cecelia Steenburgh

Mrs. Ivey

Western Civ.

30- November 2017

The 8 Characteristics of Civilization

The start of the Neolithic revolution leads to many things. One of them was civilizations. An advanced civilization has eight primary characteristics. A city or city-state, an organized government, a complex religion, social classes, job specialization, public works and technologies, art, and writing. The first civilizations grasped these concepts pretty quickly from what we can see of history.

A city is a large town or place characterized by a specific attribute. Before the common era, most places like that were called city-states. That means a city and it's surrounding area. Cities are the centers of civilizations. They are quite important to have if you want to begin a civilization. Some cultures did not have cities though. Nomads and Pastoral Nomads had functioning civilizations without a solid homestead. Two of the more commonly known ancient city-states were Babylon of Mesopotamia and Memphis, Egypt. Babylon was located in the Fertile Crescent. This lets the Babylonians have a great chance of being able to have a large surplus of food. Babylon was walled with sun-dried bricks and had tall towers. Babylon was built near the Euphrates river. The Euphrates would flood frequently which lead to a bleak outlook on life. The people who lived in Memphis, on the other hand, could have been thought to be relatively happy. Though the Nile flooded, it flooded on a regular basis so the people who lived closest to it could prepare for the outcome. Memphis was an Egyptian city-state. Egypt is thought to have a dry and barren landscape, but since Memphis is on the edge of the Nile it has some grass and other farmable landscapes that helped it thrive. Though what helps these city-states thrive is their governments.

The definition of government is the governing body of a nation, state, or community. Organized governments are the backbones of society. There were three main types of government used by ancient leaders. Theocracies, which were ruled by god-kings and their descendants. Monarchies had their mighty kings. And Oligarchies were ruled by rich and powerful land-owning men. Theocracies were the most commonly used back then so that the king or god-king would have optimal power over the lower classes. In theocracies, the king's power comes from the gods. The Egyptians, for example, thrived for years on theocracies. The pharaohs were considered to be powerful gods or the direct descendants of them. The Phoenicians were politically independent. Another example of a government is the Minoan monarchy. Their civilization was named after King Minos. Theocracies are the most interesting to me though because they are few and far between nowadays and they directly link their government and religion.

Having a religion is believing in something bigger than yourself or anybody else. Another part of religion is believing in some sort of afterlife. There are five major world religions in this day and age. Judaism which sprang from the Israelites is still around. The Israelites believed in one God who created and watches over everything. They even made up a set of guidelines for their people. The Israelites went through many years of troubles. They had hardships such as the Babylonian Captivity and the Jewish Exile. But in the end, they were saved by Cyrus whose views on equality helped them finally become the Jewish people. In the Egyptian city-states, a totally different thing was going on. Egyptians were polytheistic and the government of Egypt was theocratic. Their gods had human qualities. They could die and be born and were connected to natural phenomenon. In both religious groups, temples would be built to pray in and priests of priestesses (a specialized job) would be assigned to help with the upkeep of the temple and help the worshipers please the god(s). Being a priest or Priestess would keep you in one of the upper social classes.

Social structure is essentially a hierarchy. The people who matter the most to society are on top. It goes down from there based on wealth and land ownership. In Egypt that would be the Pharaoh and people who were associated with the religion. Then the government officials, soldiers, and scribes. Next would come the merchant's artisans and farmers. Finally, the slaves or non-citizens would be in the bottom tier. Not all civilizations were like this tough. The Indus River Valley civilization was very different from Egypt. In the valley, the eldest male would have legal authority over the entire family. In that civilization, women had absolutely no power. They couldn't even get a job.

Labor becomes specialized when systematic agricultural develops. People who didn't need to be farmers learned other trades and from there a whole bunch of things can be extrapolated. Such as how the trade empires were formed and the beginning of the business world. The Phoenicians had a huge trade empire. Trade was the basis of their economy. They had many seaports and lots of ships. Some places including Mesopotamia stayed with farming for their city-states' primary resource of income. The peoples of the Fertile Crescent were most famously known for their metalworking skills. They still had a naval presence too though. The Mesopotamians ships would go all the way to India! By traveling like this they would get to interact with and talk to people who had a culture that way different from their own.

Writing is how civilizations understand each other. Most of the ancient civilizations' writings are undecipherable by modern minds. As an example, the Minoans words are unreadable. We might have found some of their writings but what they mean besides the context. The Phoenicians language on the other was very helpful to a bunch of other civilizations (the Greeks were one of these) and is very readable. The Phoenicians were the creators of the Phonetic alphabet. For clarification, the Phonetic alphabet is a 22 letter alphabet based on the sounds you make when you speak. Writing back then was a highly regarded profession. It was called Scribing. Scribes are hardly hired nowadays because everybody learns how to write pretty young and its hard to justify if one person is better it than another. Most writings were done on clay tablets or sometimes in Egypt people would write on papyrus. Art was also commonly done on those surfaces.

Art in the ancient civilizations was mostly used to show off a person's wealth. When different types of metals were discovered the civilizations first started using them for making weapons stronger. Then they used the pretty metals for making jewelry. Copper, gold, and silver are the known metals that the peoples of Mesopotamia used. Another form of art produced by the Sumerians was textiles. They made woolen tapestries, clothes, or things likewise. On the island of Crete, there were a lot of ancient paintings depicting bull wrestling, which was a common sport there. The Minoans would use lots of red in their paintings/artwork. A thing that transcends both the worlds of art and advanced technologies is the Phoenicians famous purple dye.

Public works and technologies are the machines or practices which made these civilizations advanced for their time. Now in the previous paragraph, I mentioned the Phoenician's purple dye. So the Phoenicians figured out how to extract color from one substance, turn it into a dye, and then they were able to color other materials with their innovation. That is an extremely advanced practice for b.c.e times, and we still do it too! Egypt was the most medically advanced with their embalming practices. Embalming is a technique to keep the body from rotting after it has died. I don't know how they figured out how to embalm or figured out how it worked but that must have been an interesting conversation to have. We have mass industries for both of the fore-mentioned practices. As far as public works go most of the six civilizations we studied had some kind of citywide plumbing or irrigation system. The advancements made back then we still use and improve. That is so very fascinating.

    So the reason the class focused on these six major civilizations was that they each had something that was really cool and unique about them. For the Israelites, it was their religion. The Phoenicians had their alphabet which is considered a complex technology and it helped him write. The Minoans made lots of art. The Egyptians figured out how to preserve dead bodies. The people in the Indus River Valley were the ones who figured out how to irrigate their crops. The Mesopotamians' special thing was their location. To conclude; All the topics I talked about were effects of the Neolithic and agricultural revolutions. These revolutions let people settle down in permanent locations and grow a city. Groups of people need organized government's to properly function. Civilizations need writing to communicate. People want something to explain bigger than tonight so they create gods and religions. Eventually, some people become more important than other people so that's where the social classes develop. And the people who make the art, technologies, and create public works are the ones who specialize in specific types of crafts. That is the progression of the Agricultural revolution.