miércoles, 20 de agosto de 2008

What is a Civilisation?


First of all, and before trying to say what is a civilisation (or an attempt to do it) I would like to present some assumptions that I have related to civilisation, in order to give some previous knowledge that I have about this word.
A civilisation has to be something huge. All sort of thoughts come to my mind when I endeavour to describe civilisation and, most of them are in relation with ancient societies such as Chinese, Egyptian or Mesopotamia which are some of the most known ancient civilisations that I have heard when I was at school.
Now, I will provide some characteristics of a civilisation in order to present a general idea about it:
A civilisation is a complex society where the people that constitute it have specific established rules to follow in order to maintain an order inside of it.
This society has a division of labour and a strong social hierarchy. It is well organized and developed.
The word civilisation is often used especially when it refers to a particular society in a particular place or at time.
As conclusion, and also considering some of the characteristic and definitions provided above I would say that a civilization is a huge society formed by a specific social structure, where the order and the establishment of rules are primordial in order to continue existing as a civilisation itself.