Civilization Wallpapers

Civilization - photo wallpapers; Megawallpapers.org: The word civilization (or civilisation) has a variety of meanings related to human society. The word "civilization" comes from the Latin word for townsman or citizen, civis, and its adjectival form, civilis. To be "civilized" essentially meant being a townsman, governed by the constitution and legal statutes of that community. Roman civil law was gathered together into a consolidated body of the “Corpus Juris Civilis” in the 6th Century for Emperor Justinian (483-565 CE). Justinians code was rediscovered and used by law professors at the first University established in Western Europe, at Bologna in the 11th century. From 1388 the word “civil” appeared in English, while “civilization” as a “law which makes a criminal process civil”, appeared in 1704, closely followed in 1722 with “civilization” - meaning the opposite of “barbarity” and coming probably from the French language. [br]What characterizes civilization: Literally, a civilization is a complex society, as distinguished from a simpler society. Everyone lives in a society and a culture, but not everyone lives in a civilization. Historically, civilizations have shared some or all of the following traits (some of these were suggested by V. Gordon Childe): [br] * Intensive agricultural techniques, such as the use of human power, crop rotation, and irrigation. This has enabled farmers to produce a surplus of food that is not necessary for their own subsistence. [br] * A significant portion of the population that does not devote most of its time to producing food. This permits a division of labor. Those who do not occupy their time in producing food may instead focus their efforts in other fields, such as industry, war, science or religion. This is possible because of the food surplus described above. [br] * The gathering of some of these non-food producers into permanent settlements, called cities. [br] * A form of social organization. This can be a chiefdom, in which the chieftain of one noble family or clan rules the people; or a state society, in which the ruling class is supported by a government or bureaucracy. Political power is concentrated in the cities. [br] * The institutionalized control of food by the ruling class, government or bureaucracy. [br] * The establishment of complex, formal social institutions such as organized religion and education, as opposed to the less formal traditions of other societies. [br] * Development of complex forms of economic exchange. This includes the expansion of trade and may lead to the creation of money and markets. [br] * The accumulation of more material possessions than in simpler societies. [br] * Development of new technologies by people who are not busy producing food. In many early civilizations, metallurgy was an important advancement. [br] * Advanced development of the arts, including writing. [br]By this definition, some societies, like Greece, are clearly civilizations, whereas others like the Bushmen clearly are not. However, the distinction is not always clear. In the Pacific Northwest of the US, for example, an abundant supply of fish guaranteed that the people had a surplus of food without any agriculture. The people established permanent settlements, a social hierarchy, material wealth, and advanced artwork (most famously totem poles), all without the development of intensive agriculture. Meanwhile, the Pueblo culture of southwestern North America developed advanced agriculture, irrigation, and permanent, communal settlements such as Taos. However, the Pueblo never developed any of the complex institutions associated with civilizations. [br]The evolution of most civilizations has been summarized as follows: [br] 1. All civilizations start small, establishing their genesis with the creation of state systems for maintaining the elite. [br] 2. Successful civilizations then flourish and grow, becoming larger and larger in an accelerating fashion. [br] 3. They then reach a limiting maximum extent, perhaps managing to hold a degree of stability for a length of time. [br] 4. Competition between states in a civilization may result in one achieving predominance over the others. [br] 5. Dominance may be indirect, or may formalize into the structure of single multi-ethnic empires. [br] 6. Over the long term civilizations either collapse or get replaced by a larger, more dynamic civilization.

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Civilization Wallpapers @ Mega Wallpapers (08 Edition)
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