Re: The joy of Civilization

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 01:57:05 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On 31 Oct 2024 00:06:33 GMT, rbowman wrote:
 

You might say civilization was alive and well in contemporary Europe,
but it was vanishing in the Americas about a millennium ago.

 
Civilization originated in Mesopotamia. I have a book in my shelf on a
generalist introduction to the archaeology of the earliest
civilizations,
and it has a specific set of features that a society has to have to be
classed as a “civilization”:
 
  * Urbanization * Division of labour * Metalworking * Writing

Obviously written by an archaeologist who thought western civilization was
hot shit. Spengler puts civilization as the late stage of a culture before
its decline.