civilization

…in more or less fixed settlements. Such settlements were largely agricultural villages. In several places such villages developed into cities supported by domesticated plants and animals. The surplus produced by improved methods of cultivation and stock breeding made it possible to sustain a higher population density while also freeing up…

The inner valleys of some great alluvial rivers contain the sites of ancestral permanent settlements, including pioneer cities. Sedentary settlement in Hither Asia began about 10,000 years ago at the site of Arīḥā (ancient Jericho). Similar settlement in the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile valleys dates…

In general, civilization involves the rise of legal institutions and the acquisition of a legal monopoly of force by a government. Those developments made possible the cities and empires of classical times and the growth of dense populations. Thus “civilized” is nearly synonymous with “urban.”

…indicate the development of urban civilization:

Spengler contended that because most civilizations must pass through a life cycle, not only can the historian reconstruct the past but he can predict “the spiritual forms, duration, rhythm, meaning and product of the still unaccomplished stages of our Western history.” Unlike Arnold Toynbee, who later held that cultures are…

…rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins…