The Age of Civilizations and Empires

Civilization began with the emergence of cities and city-states. The word itself comes from the Latin civis, which means one who lives in a city.  So a civilization is a constellation of cities that occupy a given geographical area, share a common language and culture, engage cooperatively in the production and importation of food and other life necessities, and create organisational structures that ensure a continuity of government and social order.

Around the start of the 4th millennium BCE, the city-states of Mesopotamia, located in the alluvial plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now Iraq, began coming together to form the first of the great Bronze Age civilizations. Many of these cities, such as Eridu (perhaps the oldest city in the world) and Ur (just 12 kilometres northeast of Eridu), each of which housed as many as 10,000 residents, grew up almost in sight of one another. Populated by the same Sumerian people, sharing the same language and culture, and increasingly linked by trade, it was virtually inevitable that these cities should come together as the Sumerian civilization.

The same process soon followed in other regions of what was now becoming the civilised world. Cities in the Indus River Valley came together in the mid-4th millennium BCE to form the Harappan or Indus Valley civilization. It flourished until c. 1800 BCE in what is now Pakistan, north-western India, and south-eastern Afghanistan. At about the same time, from c. 3600 BCE, settlements along the Nile River began to grow and advance rapidly towards civilization. What had previously been autonomous towns and villages were united first into the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, and then (c. 3150 BCE) unified under the great dynasties of the Egyptian civilization. Meanwhile, on the nearby Mediterranean island of Crete, migrants from Anatolia and/or the Levant had settled in agricultural villages from c. 7000 BCE. As elsewhere, some of these grew into palatial cities that later (from c. 2700 BCE) comprised the Minoan civilization. This in turn was eclipsed by yet another civilization, the Mycenaean, which had emerged from city-states on the mainland of Greece c. 1600 BCE.

These five – the Sumerian, Harappan, Egyptian, Minoan, and Mycenaean – were the great Bronze Age civilizations that marked the beginning of our collective adolescence. They were born in the 4th millennium and had all expired before the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. As is typical of early adolescence, it was a period marked by a new flowering of the human mind and the first purely mental productions of the human race (e.g. writing, the alphabet, the calendar, mathematics, astronomy, etc.). It was also a time of escalating adolescent hubris during which these civilizations and succeeding empires became intoxicated with their expansionist dreams and whatever mayhem was required to realise them. Indeed, it was precisely this escalating violence and mayhem that contributed to the demise of each of these civilizations, all within a few centuries of each other, in what historians call the Bronze Age Collapse. 

There is no neat dividing line between a civilization and am empire. The former, as we have noted, is a complex agricultural and urban culture comprised of a regionally-defined constellation of city-states that share a common language, governmental structure, and sense of identity. An empire, on the other hand, is a geographically extensive group of states, united and ruled by a king or emperor who exercises military and political dominion over populations that are culturally and ethnically distinct from that of the ruling state. In their later stages, each of the Bronze Age civilizations either morphed into a more expansive empire itself or was conquered by some other expanding empire.

The city-states that had flourished as the Sumerian civilization from the start of the 4th millennium BCE were conquered by Sargon of Akkad (now the city of Fallujah in Iraq), c. 2250 BCE, to form the combined empire of Akkad and Sumer – often regarded as the first-ever empire. Having whetted his imperial appetite, Sargon went on to extend his empire as far west as modern-day Syria, Israel, and Turkey, and as far south as Oman. Within 100 years, however, the Akkadian empire itself had collapsed, to be succeeded by a brief Sumerian renaissance before the city of Ur was finally sacked and Sumer came under Amorite rule. That was the end of Sumerian civilization. From the start of the 2nd millennium BCE, Mesopotamia was dominated by successive empires – Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian. The latter was the largest in ancient history and spanned three continents – Asia,  Africa, and Europe – before it too fell to yet another Conquering Hero: Alexander the Great.

Meanwhile, the Indus Valley civilization was similarly coming unstuck. By 1700 BCE, most of its great cities – (more than 1000 have so far been excavated) – had been abandoned. The reasons are unclear. Climate change seems to have triggered a severe decades-long drought at about that time. A decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia may have been another factor. But invading hordes of barbarian horsemen from the north – Indo-European tribes from Central Asia known as Aryans – almost certainly put the final nail in this civilization’s coffin.

The heyday of Egyptian civilization was also succumbing to its own and others’ imperial ambitions. The stability that had characterised this great civilization since the middle of the 4th millennium BCE began to unravel when its own expansionist dreams brought it into conflict with the Hittite Empire for control of Syria and Palestine. The largest chariot battle ever fought reached an indecisive but costly conclusion when, in 1274 BCE, the Hittites caught the forces of Ramesses II at Kadesh in Syria in history’s first recorded military ambush. Some 50 years later, his successor, Ramesses III, managed to defeat an invading confederacy of sea raiders (known as the “Sea Peoples”) in two great land-and-sea battles. But the heavy cost of such battles exhausted Egypt’s treasury. The death of Ramesses III in 1155 BCE marked the beginning of the end for Egypt. Some unknown environmental disaster (perhaps the eruption of the Hekla volcano in Iceland) dimmed the sun’s light and seriously arrested the growth of global vegetation for almost two decades. Then a combination of droughts, famine, civil unrest, official corruption, and endless bickering among Ramesses III’s heirs precipitated a more total collapse. In subsequent centuries a now-humbled Egypt was intermittently harassed and controlled by Libyans, Assyrians, Greeks, and Persians, before its ultimate conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and its annexation as a Roman colony in 30 BCE.

Unlike its sister civilizations, the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete never succumbed to imperial temptations. Primarily a mercantile people engaged in overseas trade, they seemed content to lead a peaceful life with no expansionist ambitions. There is no evidence for a Minoan army or for their domination of any peoples outside Crete. In sharp contrast to their warmongering contemporaries, warfare does not appear in their art – and when weapons are depicted, it is only in ritual contexts. Significantly, the Minoan cosmology was never invaded by the warring male sky-gods, and the Mother Goddess remained at the centre of their essentially matriarchal religion. Such a pacific way of life, however, was no guarantee against calamity and war. The largest volcanic eruption in recorded history took place c. 1600 BCE on the Mediterranean island of Thera (now Santorini), devastating Minoan coastal settlements and inspiring Plato’s story of the lost island of Atlantis. Still another natural catastrophe, perhaps an earthquake or another eruption of Thera, further weakened Minoa and made it ripe for invasion. In any case, c. 1400 BCE, the Mycenaean Greeks did just that. They destroyed much of the island, occupied the Minoan palaces, and effectively brought Minoan civilization to an end.

Of all the Bronze Age civilizations, the Mycenaean was by far the most militant and short-lived. Emerging c. 1600 BCE among the cities of mainland Greece, it quickly became more an empire than a civilization, extending its reach to Crete, Turkey, Cyprus and Italy. Its swords and other artefacts have been found as far away as Germany and the Caucasus. Unlike the Minoans, Mycenaean society was dominated by a warrior aristocracy who advanced their interests through conquest. It is the setting of much ancient Greek literature, including the epics of Homer who, in the Iliad, recounts the probably legendary tale of the Mycenaean defeat of Troy in the Trojan War. No single explanation fits the archaeological evidence for the collapse of this warring civilization. Climate change, environmental catastrophe, invasion by the Dorians or the Sea Peoples, or the more widespread availability of iron weapons – all these may have contributed to its demise. The fact is that, from 1200 BCE, its palace centres and outlying settlements were being abandoned or destroyed, and within a hundred years any recognisable features of Mycenaean culture had disappeared.

So ended the 3000-year Age of Civilizations! By the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, all of these great Bronze Age civilizations had fallen prey, either to natural calamities, invading barbarians, or conquest by expansionist empires. Their legacy, however, continues to the present day, as certain of their defining characteristics continue to shape the civilised world.

 One of these is the necessity of trade. Civilizations depend on the export-import of food and other essentials between their cities and other more distant regions. This requires long-distance trade relationships and the development of transportation systems to service them. So ox-drawn, and later horse-drawn carts, are found from early in the 4th millennium BCE. The world’s oldest known roadway, the Sweet Track in England, dates from the same time, as does the construction of more sophisticated sailing vessels. Trade also required the invention of money to replace the previous barter system – (the Sumerians began using silver bars and the Egyptians gold bars as a medium of exchange almost from the beginning) – and the invention of writing (Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics) c. 3200 BCE in order to keep accounts. The accumulation of money soon became synonymous with power, and eventually necessitated the introduction of legal codes (e.g. the Sumerian Code of Ur in 2050 BCE and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi in 1760 BCE) to regulate business practices and the ownership of private property. All of which of course have been enormously elaborated over the centuries ever since.

Another defining characteristic involves an increasingly complex division of labour, the accumulation of wealth, private property, and class stratification based on ownership and control of production. These, together with the centralising of government in the person and court of a priest-king, led quickly to the emergence of a privileged ruling class and a complementary religious or priestly class. Overlapping networks of political, religious, economic, and military power differentially benefited these privileged groups by exploiting the mass of peasant producers, via taxation and slavery, and funneling resources and power from the bottom to the top of the social hierarchy. The common thread is control. A small group of people, the ruling and priestly class, controls the mass of people through the institutions of civilization. 

In this respect, not a great deal has changed over the centuries. A wealthy and powerful elite continues to control production, buy elections, manipulate governments, run the military-industrial complex, and manage the media. In this they are sanctioned by the religious establishment, supported by an educational system that selects who will and will not have access to high-status jobs, and protected against the threat of rebellion by contemporary versions of the ancient Coliseum that keep the masses entertained.

Two other defining characteristics are worth noting. One is institutionalized warfare and the magnification of military power. The other is the building of monumental tombs and ceremonial centres. The former, born in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BCE and growing in its killing power ever since, has, within the last 100 years, gone virtually out of control. Any restraints are gone. Wars are fought over ideas as much as over territory and resources, and the wholesale destruction of entire populations has become commonplace. The latter, whether the ziggurats of Mesopotamia or the pyramids of Egypt or the monumental palaces of Minoa, like the contemporary skyscrapers of New York or Dubai or Toronto, seem to express a kind of adolescent “I’m-the-biggest-I’m-the-best” defiance of death and a reaching for immortality.

The Age of Civilizations and Empires is scarcely over, and its legacy is evident everywhere around us. The great empires that dominated Europe until recently – the Russian, German, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian – finally collapsed only in the chaos of World War I. The Empire of Japan’s divine mission to rule the world ended only in the radioactive fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the last great empire – the British – was ultimately subdued only as recently as 1947 by the diminutive figure of Mohandas Ghandi.

Is it possible that we might finally be emerging from our collective adolescence? As we move towards a global community, could humanity be moving to a new level of maturity? If so, can we make that transition before some catastrophic clash of ideologies and worldviews brings the entire human experiment to an end? I think so. At least, that remains my hope and my contention.