Before the start of civilization, what do you know about it?

What is civilization?

Civilization can be characterized by five categories. Civilization requires advanced cities. It means a few cities should be gathered around some place. And, as agriculture helped you to play and do other stuffs rather than gathering fruits and hunting, some could be artisans, architects, or professional soldiers. As more time passed, you could find diverse jobs, or even unnecessary vocation appearing in city. I used the word 'unnecessary' because some jobs such as singer were unnecessary for survival. But, be though as it may. These so-called unnecessary jobs started to become one part of big city life. It is known as entertainment.

As well as those two requirements, institution should be at the center of civilization because the government, one form of institution, could arrange many conflicting matters efficiently and professionally. But, as the government had too much to do and too many works to solve, they need to categorize their works. Therefore, the institutions needed to record. Well, this record keeping was not confined to the governmental use, but this recognition about the importance of writing survived many ancient life to these days.

If you can write what you think and think freely without any restraint from working, what would you do? Were I the one in that position, I would make some tools that would help me in working. So, technology was advanced in big cities. Naturally this became one of the characteristics of civilization.

Civilization generally began in the place where farmers could harvest abundant amount of rice. You can imagine that most people wanted to live near rivers as they gave you bountiful resources to perfect the condition for agriculture. Four big civilization all started near the big rivers. The Euphrates and Tigris river enabled Ur and other cities to rise; the Huang He river enabled Chinese farmers to get lots of grains for next season; the Indus river is still the heart of India; the Nile is perfect place for Egyptians to imagine the underworld.

Before I give you general information on big civilizations, I would like to mention what role religion took in ancient life. Religion requires rituals. Many ancient ancestors feared natural phenomenon. Combine these two facts. Can you see the invisible tie between two facts?

Now, ancient monuments had their foundation on religion. In case of ziggurat at Ur, it was built for ceremony or for rituals held by high priests. The people of Ur considered that the highest point of the ziggurat could reach heaven. They even feared for the eyes of city god who would watch over their daily life. The power of religion must have given people ignorant of science a hope, or respite from disasters. You would soon learn that the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers were unpredictable and killed off many people. This background also gave power to religion.

This was just a small step toward huge civilization, yet the existence of religion laid a division of class.

This was all for the third story to fill up the cauldron. Thank you for reading.