Talk:Civilization

"Advancement" and "Progress"

The words advancement and progress are very prominent in the first few paragraphs. These imply directionality. Use of these words and directionality is opposed by many anthropologists. I will change these to better convey what "characteristics" informally are called civilization. Please explain any disagreements if it is deemed necessary to undo my changes.

Feudalism is a civilization

According to historians: "Feudal civilization" See the books results: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22feudal+civilization%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=djCJVr-8OMLzPYP4jsAK#q=%22feudal+civilization%22&tbm=bks

Terms under section History being applied inappropriately

The section refers to Europeans encountering peoples in the Neolithic and Mesolithic stage during the European "Age of Discovery", however the linked article states that "Neolithic" is not generally used for Australian or North and South American peoples. The cited source's date is given as 2014, but after some investigation, I have discovered that this only refers to the date it was archived, and the source itself is over 50 years old (from 1970). — Preceding unsigned comment added by PerytonMango (talk • contribs) 17:35, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Good find. Feel free to be bold and change it. Freoh (talk) 18:31, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

You will find the objection to the term by scholars of those areas is even stronger today, if anything. Johnbod (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure if the source is obsolete. That article is the Circumscription theory still seriously considered in anthropology. Maxaxa (talk) 10:30, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess I would agree that the source as a whole is not obsolete, just that it's being used to back up content that is no longer the academic consensus.      — Freoh 15:38, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

PerytonMango and Maxaxax, both of you expressed opposition to a particular sentence in § History:

In the European Age of Discovery, emerging Modernity was put into stark contrast with the Neolithic and Mesolithic stage of the cultures of many of the peoples they encountered.

I agree with you two, and so I removed the problematic sentence. Soon after it was re-added by Doug Weller without explanation. Doug Weller, could you explain why you believe that this sentence is appropriate?      — Freoh 23:14, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Did they? It seems to me they were objecting about different things. What is your objection to the sentence? I note Neolithic actually covers Australia, despite what the lead says (perhaps it shouldn't). Would Stone Age be better? Johnbod (talk) 01:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Do you have sources that justify the use of the term Stone Age? The introduction to that article says that the Stone Age ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, so I don't think so. I agree with both PerytonMango's and Maxaxax's criticisms, though you're right that they're critiquing different things.      — Freoh 01:12, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, that's wrong, or Eurocentric. The trouble is that anthropologists for these areas are embarassed by any overt reference to the huge technological gaps in the Early Modern period between the societies that are their subject and other Old World societies that turned up in ships. So they tend to remove or obfuscate material, to the detriment of the reader. Johnbod (talk) 01:24, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with your interpretation, and we shouldn't dismiss reliable scholarship.      — Freoh 01:30, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Johnbod, do you have evidence that the current text matches the current academic consensus? Or can I delete this content again?      — Freoh 19:06, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, haven't been following this conversation closely. If anything, the information on various parts of Wikipedia should probably not be overtly contradictory, and since "Neolithic" and "Stone Age" are defined completely differently on their respective pages, it's probably not accurate here.

The Three-age system page goes into more detail about the history of this interpretation of human society, and says in the intro "The schema, however, has little or no utility for establishing chronological frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia, the Americas and some other areas; and has little importance in contemporary archaeological or anthropological discussion for these regions."

In short, the wording of the article as it is presently implies that Neolithic and Mesolithic are "stages" that all civilizations pass through, and it appears that this idea has been almost entirely discarded.

The reason I haven't gone and changed it is that I feel this page needs in-depth attention more broadly with regard to assumptions about "Advanced" vs. less advanced civilizations, many of which are uncited. Take for example this excerpt under the "Characteristics" heading: "Throughout history, successful civilizations have spread, taking over more and more territory, and assimilating more and more previously uncivilized people. Nevertheless, some tribes or people remain uncivilized even to this day. These cultures are called by some "primitive", a term that is regarded by others as pejorative."

This wording suggests that those who use the term "primitive" and those who view it as pejorative are roughly equal in legitimacy. This is false. The sentence links to Primitive Culture (book) which is a book from 1871 that is described on the linked page as largely discredited/rejected by anthropologists. The progression from "savagery" to civilization as a sequence of linear developmental stages of a society has been pretty much totally discredited by the field of anthropology.

I have not tried to fix these problems because they need more expertise and high quality, recent sources than I can provide, but at the very least, the page needs more citations, and particularly citations linking to secondary sources that summarize or demonstrate an academic consensus, rather than describing the views of individual writers and leaving the reader to guess at whether they are representative. Perhaps the entire page should be reworked to some extent, to be organized around summarizing the history of attempts to define civilization and the ways various definitions have been applied.PerytonMango (talk) 17:54, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I hadn't seen this discussion. @Freoh perhaps you could explain your addition of "Many Westerners refer to" - which source says that? Doug Weller talk 15:05, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I was trying to give an in-text attribution that summarized the existing sources – the Encyclopædia Britannica and Ball State University. Here's a more explicit citation that attributes the idea to Western conservatives:

• Graeber, David (2013). The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement. New York: Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 978-0-8129-9356-1. OCLC 769425385. One reason we find it so difficult to reconstruct the history of these democratic sensibilities, and the everyday forms of organization and decision making they inspired, is that we are used to telling the story in a very peculiar way. It's a story that only really took shape in the wake of World War I, when universities in the United States and some parts of Europe began promulgating the notion that democracy was an intrinsic part of what they called "Western civilization." The idea that there even was something called "Western civilization" was, at the time, relatively new: the expression would have been meaningless in the time of Washington or Jefferson. According to this new version of history, which soon became gospel to American conservatives, and is largely taken for granted by everyone else, democracy is really a set of institutional structures, based on voting, that was first "invented" in ancient Athens and has remained somehow embedded in a grand tradition that traveled from Greece to Rome to medieval England, making a detour through Renaissance Italy, and then finally lodging itself in the North Atlantic, which is now its special home. This formulation is how former cold warriors like Samuel Huntington can argue that we are now engaged in a "war of civilizations," with the free and democratic West vainly trying to inflict its values on everyone else. As an historical argument, this is an obvious example of special pleading. The whole story makes no sense. First of all, about the only thing Voltaire, Madison, or Gladstone really had in common with an inhabitant of ancient Greece is that he grew up reading ancient Greek books. But if the Western tradition is simply an intellectual tradition, how can one possibly call it democratic? In fact, not a single surviving ancient Greek author was in favor of democracy, and for 2,400 years at least, virtually every author now identied with "Western civilization" was explicitly antidemocratic. When someone has the temerity to point this out, the usual response by conservatives is to switch gears and say that "the West" is a cultural tradition, whose unique love of liberty can already be witnessed in medieval documents like the Magna Carta and was just waiting to burst out in the Age of Revolutions. This makes a little better sense. If nothing else, it would explain the popular enthusiasm for democracy in countries like the United States and France, even in the face of universal elite disapproval. But, if one takes that approach, and says "the West" is really a deep cultural tradition, then other parts of the conventional story fall apart. For one thing, how can one say that the Western tradition begins in Greece? After all, if we're speaking in cultural terms, the people alive today most similar to ancient Greeks are obviously modern Greeks. Yet most of those who celebrate the "Western tradition" don't even think modern Greece is part of the West anymore—Greece apparently having defected back around A.D. 600 when they chose the wrong variety of Christianity.

     — Freoh 15:35, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

As this is rather an opinionated piece (and it does not hide that) its observations about what people think might be worth using but some of the other opinions require caution. To me it seems to be mixing several different threads. As editors of a Wikipedia we have to try to separate the threads. A couple of points of logic: 1. there is no logical reason why the country where X started needs to still be a country where X exists today; 2. an idea can be both widely accepted and controversial at the same time. Here are also some opinions of mine just to compare to those in the quote: 1. It is not really controversial to say that western civilization is generally seen as having its roots in Greece. Let's face it, a major theme of the concept is the contrast with the older civilizations of the "east" (and by extension north Africa). 2. I think the idea that Greece invented democracy is indeed one which experts would tend to see as an oversimplification, but it is a common idea. Maybe we shouldn't overemphasize it too much, or make simple references to it in a picture caption. 3. What is perhaps more defensible is that the idea of a democratic constitution in a complex society (a city for example) was certainly something which classical literature did pass on to future generations, whether the authors agreed with it or not, and this certainly played a major role in inspiring the establishment of the new types of modern democracies.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:08, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree that David Graeber is biased, as are all sources. My point is that this caption is kind of vague (and yes, an oversimplification). It is open to interpretation, and some of those interpretations are controversial. Unless we're providing an in-text attribution, we should keep the content specific and uncontroversial.      — Freoh 16:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Isn't this in the wrong section? This is a lively and highly biased excerpt that refers to specific America-only cultural issues, and has several issues. But it does at least confirm that "the idea that Greece invented democracy is indeed one which experts would tend to see as an oversimplification, but it is a common idea" as AL says above, which you seemed to find, original, startling and dubious. I hope you will now remove your tag. Johnbod (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Can you clarify what your proposal is?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:08, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Current	Proposal
The Acropolis of Athens: Greece is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy.	The Acropolis of Athens – many Westerners describe Greece as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy.

How's this?      — Freoh 18:02, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Overkill for a caption ref. Better to work something into the text, & ref it there. The quote should be trimmed to half the full length or less. Johnbod (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Good point by Johnbod. A shorter caption might avoid the need for all this discussion. But looking at the proposal (because I guess it might still also be relevant to what we put in the body) I don't really get the importance of the change being made. It is as if there is a difference between westerners and non-westerners on this point. Do you Japanese people deny that classical Greece was a starting point for European city-based culture? In any case I presume the concern is mainly the reference to democracy? That could be removed or tweaked. For example we could say (in the body) that classical Greece continued to be a source of inspiration to the development of new types of democratic institutions in early modern Europe?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:26, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I edited my proposal above to cut down the quote. I'm not Japanese, so I don't know what you mean by you Japanese people, and I don't know the answer to your question. My point is that this "Western civilization" narrative is a relatively recent product of Western culture and is not universally accepted. My proposal was my attempt at clarifying this, but I'd like to see your alternative proposal if you have one.      — Freoh 20:48, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Personally I still do not understand your proposal. You go from saying something is widely believed to specifying it is only believed by many western people. Why? And what is the source for this only being something western people believe? I see nothing in either wording about this being a "relatively recent product of Western culture" (or the opposite) and nor do I know how you'd source that, or how you would define "relatively recent".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:13, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

ADDED: I should correct myself a bit. Obviously I can see one source which mentions the concept being recent. The more important point is that I don't see the relevance of this recentness, which is already a pretty complicated and debatable point in Graeber, to the proposals.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:59, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think that a better solution is to just replace the caption with something more specific and less controversial. How's my newest version?      — Freoh 22:03, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Terrible, I'm afraid, and hardly "less controversial"! Johnbod (talk) 03:12, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I agree. Of course our articles can discuss such controversies, but I think for this simple illustration most of us would just be expecting a reference to Greece as a traditional reference point for the development of a distinct European civilization, starting in the Mediterranean?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:34, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

What makes you say that this version is controversial?      — Freoh 10:29, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Does this really need to be explained? You are claiming that "the idea of Western civilization" was established as a result of the Greeks "referring to the rest of the world as uncivilized "barbarians"." That's a strange and very specific theory. (1) This places a lot of importance in the mere invention of a word for non-Greek speakers. (2) I am willing to accept that the Greeks had a concept similar to civilization in the sense of city-life, but I do not think it is even true that Greeks saw Middle-easterners and North Africans as uncivilized. (What might be more easily argued, but not in such an caption, is that the Greeks sometimes portrayed the older non-Greek city-peoples as being too accustomed to being ruled by tyrants. Greeks had issues with bowing and so forth. This has been a popular and lasting theme.) FWIW, at least one Greek, Aristotle, effectively called the other Europeans uncivilized. For him the Greeks represented the optimum middle ground.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:13, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes. The idea of Greece (Athens in fact) as the "cradle of democracy" etc has, as Graeber confirms, been the standard idea in the West for a long time. It can be argued about, & might not even be correct, but it can't really be called "controversial". By contrast, the idea that the well-known distain of the Greeks for non-Hellenes was a significant factor in the origins of Western civilization, seems a novel, minority opinion, and therefore "controversial". In fact I'd say that Greek distain for others was rather more marked in the Byzantine period, long after they ceased to have a leading progressive role vin such matters. Johnbod (talk) 16:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

If something is argued about, isn't it controversial by definition? What makes you say that my source presents a minority opinion?      — Freoh 21:19, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

At the least, your version is more controversial, not less as your edit summary claimed. It's probably impossible to say anything about civilization on a broad scale that some people would argue with, but that doesn't make the whole topic "controversial". Johnbod (talk) 17:46, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Could you give reliable sources that show that my caption is controversial? I agree that broad-scale generalizations are bound to be somewhat controversial, which is why I focused on a more specific aspect.      — Freoh 18:22, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

References

Freoh, you are the proposer of the text, not Johnbod, so technically the WP:ONUS is on you to justify your proposal to fellow editors with doubts. OTOH, such rules should not even be relevant because we are discussing the caption of an illustration, and not body text. The caption should be minimal IMHO.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:30, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

 Question: have we reached a consensus that we should delete the first paragraph in § History?  — Freoh 16:04, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

No! Something certainly needs to be said. Why do you think it doesn't? Would "hunter-gather and village agriculture" be a way forward? Johnbod (talk) 18:52, 3 June 2023 (UTC)