Cradle of civilization
A cradle of civilization is a location and a culture where civilization was developed independently of other civilizations in other locations. A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages.
Scholars generally acknowledge six cradles of civilization: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient India and Ancient China are believed to be the earliest in Afro-Eurasia, while the Caral–Supe civilization of coastal Peru and the Olmec civilization of Mexico are believed to be the earliest in the Americas. All of the cradles of civilization depended upon agriculture for sustenance. All depended upon farmers producing an agricultural surplus to support the centralized government, political leaders, religious leaders, and public works of the urban centers of the early civilizations.
Rise of civilization
The earliest signs of a process leading to sedentary culture can be seen in the Levant to as early as 12,000 BC, when the Natufian culture became sedentary; it evolved into an agricultural society by 10,000 BC. The importance of water to safeguard an abundant and stable food supply, due to favourable conditions for hunting, fishing and gathering resources including cereals, provided an initial wide spectrum economy that triggered the creation of permanent villages.The earliest proto-urban settlements with several thousand inhabitants emerged in the Neolithic which began in Western Asia in 10,000 BC. The first cities to house several tens of thousands were Uruk, Ur, Kish and Eridu in Mesopotamia, followed by Susa in Elam and Memphis in Egypt, all by the 31st century BC.
Historic times are marked apart from prehistoric times when "records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations"—in written or oral form. If the rise of civilization is taken to coincide with the development of writing out of proto-writing, then the Near Eastern Chalcolithic and the development of proto-writing in Harappa in the Indus Valley of South Asia around 3,300 BC are the earliest instances, followed by Chinese proto-writing evolving into the oracle bone script, and again by the emergence of Mesoamerican writing systems from about 900 BC.
In the absence of written documents, most aspects of the rise of early civilizations are contained in archaeological assessments that document the development of formal institutions and the material culture. A "civilized" way of life is ultimately linked to conditions coming almost exclusively from agriculture. Gordon Childe defined the development of civilization as the result of two successive revolutions: the Neolithic Revolution of Western Asia, triggering the development of settled communities, and the urban revolution which also first emerged in Western Asia, which enhanced tendencies towards dense settlements, specialized occupational groups, social classes, exploitation of surpluses, monumental public buildings and writing. Few of those conditions, however, are unchallenged by the records: dense cities were not attested in Egypt's Old Kingdom and cities had a dispersed population in the Maya area; the Incas lacked writing although they could keep records with Quipus which might also have had literary uses; and often monumental architecture preceded any indication of village settlement. For instance, in present-day Louisiana, researchers have determined that cultures that were primarily nomadic organized over generations to build earthwork mounds at seasonal settlements as early as 3400 BC. Rather than a succession of events and preconditions, the rise of civilization could equally be hypothesized as an accelerated process that started with incipient agriculture and culminated in the Oriental Bronze Age.
Single or multiple cradles
Scholars once thought that civilization began in the Fertile Crescent and spread out from there by influence. Scholars now believe that civilizations arose independently at several locations in both hemispheres. They have observed that sociocultural developments occurred along different timeframes. "Sedentary" and "nomadic" communities continued to interact considerably; they were not strictly divided among widely different cultural groups. The concept of a cradle of civilization has a focus where the inhabitants came to build cities, to create writing systems, to experiment in techniques for making pottery and using metals, to domesticate animals, and to develop complex social structures involving class systems.Today, scholarship generally identifies six areas where civilization emerged independently: the Fertile Crescent, including Mesopotamia and the Levant; the Nile Valley in Northeast Africa; the Indo-Gangetic Plain; the North China Plain; the Andean Coast; and the Mesoamerican Gulf Coast.
Cradles of civilization
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent comprises a crescent-shaped region of elevated terrain in West Asia, encompassing regions of modern-day Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq, extending to the Zagros Mountains in Iran. It stands as one of the earliest regions globally where agricultural practices emerged, marking the advent of sedentary farming communities.By 10,200 BC, fully developed Neolithic cultures, characterized by the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B phases, emerged within the Fertile Crescent. These cultures diffused eastward into South Asia and westward into Europe and North Africa. Among the notable PPNA settlements is Jericho, located in the Jordan Valley, believed to be the world's earliest established city, with initial settlement dating back to around 9600 BC and fortification occurring around 6800 BC.
Current theories and findings identify the Fertile Crescent as the first and oldest cradle of civilization. Examples of sites in this area are the early Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük.
Mesopotamia
In Mesopotamia, the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers produced rich fertile soil and a supply of water for irrigation. Neolithic cultures emerged in the region from 8000 BC onwards. The civilizations that emerged around these rivers are the earliest known non-nomadic agrarian societies. It is because of this that the Fertile Crescent region, and Mesopotamia in particular, are often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The period known as the Ubaid period is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain, although it is likely earlier periods exist obscured under the alluvium. It was during the Ubaid period that the movement toward urbanization began. Agriculture and animal husbandry were widely practiced in sedentary communities, particularly in Northern Mesopotamia, and intensive irrigated hydraulic agriculture began to be practiced in the south.Around 6000 BC, Neolithic settlements began to appear all over Egypt. Studies based on morphological, genetic, and archaeological data have attributed these settlements to migrants from the Fertile Crescent in the Near East arriving in Egypt and North Africa during the Egyptian and North African Neolithic Revolution and bringing agriculture to the region. Tell el-'Oueili is the oldest Sumerian site settled during this period, around 5400 BC, and the city of Ur also first dates to the end of this period. In the south, the Ubaid period lasted from around 6500 to 3800 BC.
Sumerian civilization coalesced in the subsequent Uruk period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and, during its later phase, the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script. Proto-writing in the region dates to around 3800 BC, with the earliest texts dating to 3300 BC; early cuneiform writing emerged in 3000 BC. It was also during this period that pottery painting declined as copper started to become popular, along with cylinder seals. Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king, assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. It is quite possible that the later Sumerian pantheon was modeled upon this political structure.
The Jemdet Nasr period, which is generally dated from 3100 to 2900 BC and succeeds the Uruk period, is known as one of the formative stages in the development of the cuneiform script. The oldest clay tablets come from Uruk and date to the late fourth millennium BC, slightly earlier than the Jemdet Nasr Period. By the time of the Jemdet Nasr Period, the script had already undergone a number of significant changes. It originally consisted of pictographs, but by the time of the Jemdet Nasr Period it was already adopting simpler and more abstract designs. It is also during this period that the script acquired its iconic wedge-shaped appearance.
Uruk trade networks started to expand to other parts of Mesopotamia and as far as North Caucasus, and strong signs of governmental organization and social stratification began to emerge, leading to the Early Dynastic Period. After the Early Dynastic period began, there was a shift in control of the city-states from the temple establishment headed by council of elders led by a priestly "En" towards a more secular Lugal. The Lugals included such legendary patriarchal figures as Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, who supposedly reigned shortly before the historic record opens around 2700 BC, when syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms. The center of Sumerian culture remained in southern Mesopotamia, even though rulers soon began expanding into neighboring areas. Neighboring Semitic groups, including the Akkadian speaking Semites who lived alongside the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, adopted much of Sumerian culture for their own. The earliest ziggurats began near the end of the Early Dynastic Period, although architectural precursors in the form of raised platforms date back to the Ubaid period. The Sumerian King List dates to the early second millennium BC. It consists of a succession of royal dynasties from different Sumerian cities, ranging back into the Early Dynastic Period. Each dynasty rises to prominence and dominates the region, only to be replaced by the next. The document was used by later Mesopotamian kings to legitimize their rule. While some of the information in the list can be checked against other texts such as economic documents, much of it is probably purely fictional, and its use as a historical document is limited.
Eannatum, the Sumerian king of Lagash, established the first verifiable empire in history in 2500 BC. The neighboring Elam, in modern Iran, was also part of the early urbanization during the Chalcolithic period. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East. The emergence of Elamite written records from around 3200 BC also parallels Sumerian history, where slightly earlier records have been found. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC. The Semitic-speaking Akkadian empire emerged around 2350 BC under Sargon the Great. The Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC. Under Sargon and his successors, the Akkadian language was briefly imposed on neighboring conquered states such as Elam and Gutium. After the fall of the Akkadian Empire and the overthrow of the Gutians, there was a brief reassertion of Sumerian dominance in Mesopotamia under the Third Dynasty of Ur. After the final collapse of Sumerian hegemony in Mesopotamia around 2004 BC, the Semitic Akkadian people of Mesopotamia eventually coalesced into two major Akkadian-speaking nations: Assyria in the north, and, a few centuries later, Babylonia in the south, both of which would go on to form powerful empires between the 20th and 6th centuries BC. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Semitic Assyrian-Babylonian population.