Over the previous couple of decades I have noticed an increasing tendency to use the word, and talk about the concept civilisation, as if it was an exact synonym of culture. People talk and write about civilisation the same way they do about culture, as if the two were identical. However this is a careless usage (or a warning sign of a major semantic shift) since the term civilisation, properly used, to borrow a term from mathematics, is a SUBSET of culture.
To be Human is to have Culture, whether we recognise it as such or not. The word Culture developed from a Latin word, describing the use of tools, primarily for agriculture - CULTUS (see Endnote One). For the Romans those who had culture were humans who cultivated their surrounding physical environment and in particular worked fields with tools. The close Greek equivalent PAIDEIA (See Endnote Two) implies an additional element of training and education - Paideia was the process people went through to become cultured adult Hellenes. For the ancient Greeks and Romans "culture" marked the difference between settled farmers and citizens of the Empire, and the outsiders, the unsedentary dangerous nomads and barbarians of the dense Northern forests, and Eurasian steppes and plains. The ideal citizen participated in the social order and enhanced public affairs (Latin Res Publica = Greek Ta Politika) with their involvement, whereas the barbarian disrupted orderly society, or had a social order in which there were only rulers and slaves (a view of Neat Eastern Oriental culture held by the Roamsn and Greeks, especially about the Persians and later the Parthians) or had no strong centralized organisation (Germans and Celts). Ancient political writers saw anarchy - lack of (central) rule as chaos not freedom. Aristotle defined the true human - anthropos - as being a socio-political animal - his infamous Politikon Zoon
Civilisation as a word has its source in an Indo-European radical (See Endnote Three) that means settle or rest in one place. Civitas is the state or concept of being part of a settlement, be it a civis, urbs, polis, deme, gard, rath, dun, or burgh. The urbanized human was viewed as functioning as part of a greater whole.
Other cultures defined "culture" as possessing literacy, the capacity to use SYMBOLS, certain types of marks, to represent numbers, sounds, and ideas, (See Endnote Four).Urban Cultures had signs. In Chinese influenced East Asian cultures (Japan, Korea, Vietnam) the character for scholar and culture is the same - SHI (See Endnote Five). In its older seal script form this ideogram represents a scholar wearing a robe with big sleeves. The literate person is the cultivated one. A similar concept is found in Egyptian and Mesopotamian writings which praise scribes over farmers and soldiers. Perhaps also the Islamic division of cultures and religions into "People of the Book" versus those with no written scriptures and hence "pagan" evolved from this cultural bias? It is ironic that in modern urban societies there are many individuals who have limited knowledge of the past, be it as folklore, legend, or history, whereas many non urban cultures have "illiterate" experts who have memorized histories dating back hundreds or thousands of years though many so called illiterate peoples have symbolic maps - sand or bark or cave paintings or other patterns used and taught as mnemonic systems.
Modern science acknowledges all tool users have culture of some sort even if the tool is only an idea or meme, in which case our primate kin and other non-humans also have culture of some kind - if they have the capacity to share ideas. Certainly wild chimps, monkeys, sea otters, racoons, and some bird species, particularly corvids have demonstrated tool usage with sharp stones. We know whales and other cetaceans and some avian species not only copy but actively transform songs and sounds into new patterns but what if any information is being conveyed we can yet say. Those elaborate humpback symphonies might be a millennia old cosmogony yet also merely be co-ordinates for food locations and boasting about how they found the spot first? (Perhaps we should though exclude parrots from this argument along with certain domestic pets who certainly vocalize their needs to their humans all too well!) If interested in memetics you might want to read another of my essays which deals with Memetics
We should bear in mind song is another way to organise information. In the Beginning before printing and writing there was the "WORD". Song, music, and other oral arts are important vectors and agents of cultural change and evolution. Basho reminded his readers in one of his essays of the common origin of country and city dwellers' culture. This translation comes from Daniel Buchanan's One Hundred Famous Haiku (1973) an excellent work for personal pleasure and reference use as it includes the kana and kanji as well as notes and translation.
Furyu no / hajime ya! oku no / Ta-ue uta
Pristine elegance / There, in the interior, / The rice planting song.
Furyu is often translated as style and hajime = origins, oku = interior.
Even in a remote rural area there's culture which is the origin of city style.
Hard tool use however does not seem to be genetically inherent in humans. We do not instinctively without training build dams and houses or nests. What many humans do seem to have though is the ability to become sapient, self aware and communicative. Being able to say both I AM and I DO seems to be hard wired as a potential in humans. Note that I said ability. Whether a concept is transmitted via genes or communicated in a basic form by parents or teachers it still has to be developed and cultivated. A child may spontaneously make a song but only the rare musical genius goes on to compose some major opus so compelling that it lives on beyond its creator. Chimps and humans and other primates may have an innate ability to copy speech or sign language but both benefit from training in usage and some are more adept than others!
In a misguided but understandable attempt to gain more respect for non-urban cultures, and overcome centuries of bias against tribal and rural centred cultures, certain writers have taken to referring to their culture of origin as a civilisation regardless of its actual type. Understand that I am NOT saying that only academic anthropological classifications are valid. The stereotypical "dead white male" authority figure and Perfectly Politically Correct Person are BOTH equally unattractive extremes along with the sort of Post Modernism which makes no distinctions of quality. What concerns me is careless usage that shows a lack of genuine and meaningful respect for cultural diversity. We need to avoid the previous Eurocentric excesses of over categorising cultures as if they were objects to be deconstructed yet also avoid the other extreme of using some kind of bland politically correct jargon that "balances power" by valuing interpretation and subtext over actual meaning and accurate description. Metatext may be "fun" but it is not science. The best "classical" traditions, European and other, value brevity and clarity in prose and harmony in poetry and hold as a principle that rhetoric and technique in any form is a tool and not an end.
Equity of respect for cultural differences is probably better based on the fact that to be human is to be part of a CULTUS. I myself do not consider that urban cultures or civilisations should be defined in terms of being superior or inferior to tribal feudal or agrarian cultures nevertheless there are differences.
So what is a culture? Is it not just using tools but also ideas? A culture has technology and art. Technology changes the environment and how we interface with physical reality. Art and ideas, communication, cause change by making new connections. Culture seems to be a connexus? Is "culture" simply how humans cope with change, a product of process and complexity?
What of the idea that civilisations are "highly advanced" cultures? Advancing to what end? A culture may be complex in its structure and technology or have highly developed legal and ethical codes however these complexities are useless if they are preached rather than practised, or can be accessed only by an limited privileged elite, or if that complexity is about to cause the culture to implode and collapse! There are almost too many historical examples available. We endlessly re-analyse why the Roman Empire broke apart or why many of the Mayans returned to cities to smaller settlements because the complexity that lead to the collapse clouds the cause of decline.
Advanced medical technology may eventually cure the AIDS syndrome but our complex network of transport also enabled the HIV virus that causes this immunodeficiency syndrome to cross oceans from Africa to other continents. AIDS and HIV from a starting point in Central Africa have spread around the world.(Or vice-versa if you're a conspiracy theorist!) Likewise the trading networks of shipping routes protected from piracy by the policing actions of the Pax Romana and roads and bridges built by Imperial engineers may have contributed to the decline in urban cultures in late Antiquity by making the spread of plagues from Asia into Europe easier and faster. Having advanced ethical codes preached by various sects and cults, religious and philosophical, did not prevent civil wars in Buddhist Japan, late Republican Rome, or between Catholics and Protestants in Europe. Anyone who presumes their culture is superior to Islamic culture because they are a Christian Westerner needs to take a good look at earlier European history. Likewise those who claim Islamic culture, whatever that is, (the Wahhabis seem to be anti culture to me but I have a soft spot for the Sufis) is better than that of the "decadent West", might want to take a look at the battles between different factions within Islam and how the Turkic tribes took advantage of that. If you do not learn form history you become a victim of the progresses that turn events into history and also legend and myth.
Is civilisation more than simply urban culture though? It seems to be possibly be a connexus, a cultural network with a central foci or multiple focal points with the foci often being cities, permanent centres with multiple functions. The city regardless of size is a settlement with some kind of boundary, geographic, political, or administrative, that marks it off from surrounding wilderness and rural areas (See Endnote Six). It is a focus for trade, business, religion and ritual practices, cultural exchange and development, education and government. Court, temple and market interface. Cities are focal points within a greater network hence my choice of the term - CONNEXUS - (See Endnote Seven) for linked urban cultural complexes.
In non urban cultures the foci shift - they are more flexible. A nomadic settlement can briefly join with others to form a city for a short while. When resources shift, traders move on, as summer grazing ends, or winter weather closes a pass to travel, and the urban exchange dissolves. Examples of temporary cities would be large scale summer or winter encampments, and various trade fairs and religious or cultural festivals.
A city will endure and become the centre for a connexus if it has more permanent resources to compensate for these shifts for a longer period of time. It generally develops where there is permanent water supply (rivers, canals, irrigation, dams) or on the junction of several trade routes especially if there is also a cultural focus nearby like a shrine or holy place.
However civilisation is also more than a place - it is also a state of mind or a concept of connexus - things coming together - humans meet and exchange not just resources and products but also ideas. Tolerance of otherness is another essential - the ability to see the alien as an source of renewal and challenge rather than a threat. A civilisation that tolerances diversity can include or link to non urban cultures within its connexus, its cultural domains and geographic area. We all have culture as humans. We are all part of human civilisation as a whole because it is an abiding, enduring connexus that lives!
Civilisation is connexus, plurality and diversity creating a human unity.
ONE: Cultus and culture derive from the latin verb Colo = To Cultivate, till, tend, use (tools) to take care of something. However if one was trying to talk about our modern definition of culture in Latin the phrase would be "cultus humanus".
TWO: Paideia derives from the Greek words Paideuoo and Pais (stem paid - ) . Education - paideusis was the process of training a child into an adult citizen. * Paid - corresponds to Latin Puer - Child.
THREE: Our English word Civilisation comes from French Civilizer from Med. Latin civilizare, a compound of the Latin noun Civis and a Greek suffix - izo. In Late and Mediaeval Latin this suffix fused with the Latin infinitive ending to become - izare and in the French langauge the - zer ending of infinitve verb forms.
Civilisation, Civitas, and Civis come from the I. E. radical *ki or *kei. The corresponding Greek terms are politismos, politeia, and polis. The *Kei radical in Greek shifted meaning to become the origin of the verb keimai - lie down rest, and the noun koomee ( - village). Note that Sanskrit has a cognate verbal stem çi. Phonetic Other Greek words are polis and astu for town.
FOUR: The original of the word letter is from a mark Letter comes from Latin littera related to litum lino from the stem *LI - to smear or daub with ink pigment. The Greek word for letter Gramma is from the verb graphoo from *gra (= Latin Scribo to write) which also denotes a mark drawn or written. The glyph in hieroglyph actually derives from a verb glyphoo - to carve engrave hollow out.
FIVE: SHI is spelt SHIH in the older Wades-Giles transliteration system.
It is the 33rd radical. For the curious related words without their special accents are
Japanese: SHI man samurai retainer, Vietnamese: si, su, thay , Cantonese si (tone 6), Hokkien Amoy or Southern Min su Korean+
SIX: Languages with ideogram symbol sets often reflect this distinction. The Egyptian hieroglyph for city (niwt) shows a walled town in its earliest form and later shows a circle divided by 4 "streets". Chinese ideograms show enclosures and the suffix - pur for walled city in Indic languages and place names probaly comes from the same radical as Greek polis and derives ultimately from the I.E. radical *PL - fold fill full - perhaps the idea of a city or settlement as a complex place within walls. Community comes form a Latin word meaning shared walls. The derivation from *pl makes sense if we consider that the first Neolithic towns sheltered within or on earthworks and mounds? Such a semantic derivation also explains Germanic *Beorg. The earliest Mesolithic settlements in Europe seem to have often been built on slopes or hilltops and hence protected by a slope or rising land? The difference between berg and burg may be a semantic split. One ownders if there is a connection to Anatolian purgos - tower or citadel? West European place names in - dun -din and -ton reflect an original Celtic or preCeltic stem of - dunum which seems to have been settlement on a hill Castrum with its many variants Turkic hisar Arabic Qasr Celtic Caer may derive form a preIE stem of *KSR or KTR . Punic had qarth - the carth in carthage and Ugaritic had Qaritu? Possibvly these are related to the *GARD stem that gives us yard and gard. Some other words for city are Sumerian URU, Akkadian Alu, and Hebrew Qirya or 'ir and Arabic Medinat.
Returning to Sinitic terms judging from the oldest script forms
Ch'eng (Japanese Joo / Shiro Hokkien Amoy Sian Viet dai / thanh / thi) was a walled town guarded by earthworks and warriors
Kung a word translated as shrine or palace was a shared public covered space
Shih was a market or trading place and Ching (Japanese Kyo Viet Kinh) usually translated as capital has a ideogram suggestive of an older meaning of high place.
Another word Fu seems to show raised terraces in its seal script form and a second word translated as capital seems to be trying to show an idea that a city is the sum of its connected parts.
I will try to add the Unicode for the ideograms or small gifs of the seal script forms in the next revision of this article.
SEVEN: I have derived the word connexus from con plus nexus. Nexus comes from the Latin Verb Necto to tie bind connect. Cognates Sanskrit nah and Greek naiw, new and naos.
This essay has been revised edited and converted to Xhtml with style sheets Nov 2005 and was originally published 2002 by J. Vaux. It would be about 8 A4 pages long if printed out. Minor revisions were made in August 2006.
Here's a link back to the Top Intro Page
Get your own Free Home Page