Tomatekh
Sahib-i-Qirani
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2012
- Messages
- 1,408
But that's such a long and complicated and vague thing to explain... Okay, but I'm not really going to double check most of this so don't complain if some details are wrong. Also, people don't get mad if I say x culture is not a civilization. When referring to how people classify the cradles its more a set of specific criteria and a lot of tribal cultures won't fit into them. That doesn't mean they're not civilizations as we or the game might define them or they are in any way less of a culture. So, wall of text...
The thing is, there were a lot of really advanced Neolithic cultures all over the place (and in non-cradle spots like Europe as well as a lot of megalithic sites). Anatolia is really important here because of ~10,000 BC - 8,000 BC sites like Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe. Because of these sites, quite a few people like to argue for southern Anatolia as the true cradle of civilization but it’s generally accepted the sites didn’t really have the level of social organization and population specialization to make that distinction.
So the question is how to classify civilization from an advanced Neolithic culture. It’s generally something like when a culture begins to emerge out of the Neolithic period and start the process of state formation and exhibiting the majority of stuff like urbanization, agriculture and animal domestication, pottery and metalworking, monumental architecture and public buildings, writing, and a high level of social organization and population/class specialization (with a big emphasis on the last two, social organization and specialization, as criteria). There are six accepted cradles where civilization is understood to have emerged independently: Mesopotamia, Nile River, Indus River, Yellow River, Peruvian Coast/Andes, Coatzacoalcos River/Mesoamerica. However, the criteria are somewhat vague and not all the cradles meet all of the same criteria. The Yellow River had no real monumental architecture; the Peruvian Coast was lacking in pottery, metal working, and writing (not potentially counting a form of quipu). For cradles such as Norte Chico, you can still very clearly see high levels of social organization, specialization, as well as elements of cultural continuity with later civilizations in the area, but it goes to show that maybe you need a degree of flexibility when classifying something as a cradle.
There’s also stuff like cultural cradles, where even if civilization didn’t emerge independently, the site was still early enough and significant enough that its culture would have had a huge impact on subsequent civilizations in the area. Something like the Minoans would be here. The Minoans developed a lot of stuff independently, but it’s generally accepted that they were also influenced by stuff from the Egypt, Anatolia (and possibly Vinča) areas. However, it was still one of the earliest "true" civilizations in the area and its culture would greatly influence Greece and subsequently Europe.
So, when you say there were six cradles of civilization, that doesn’t mean that all civilizations are cultural descendants or even subsequent settlements of these original six (although some later civilizations very much were). They are largely understood as areas where specific technologies and concepts of social organization coalesced and/or developed independently (allowing the culture to emerge from the Neolithic and form "civilization") and then these technologies and social concepts (as well as an inevitable degree of cultural transmission) spread from these areas into many existing developing complex cultures (they didn't necessarily overwrite or found these cultures). When I said 2-3 before, I was actually underestimating (it was more there were 2-3 I would potentially like to make as civ). So while there are other sites that might not be true cradles of civilization, there are sites that might be significant cultural cradles, or developed an extremely complex Neoltihic culture and then collapsed just before they reached the level of true civilization, or would have likely developed civilization independently if they had not come into contact with an existing civilization before they reached that point.
The Vinča culture is a big one (and one I might also be interested in doing as a civ at one point). A very complex and advanced Neolithic culture in the Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedon area. Developed some of the earliest known examples of copper metallurgy and one of the earliest forms of proto-writing. High population. Somewhat monumental architecture in the form of giant sized figurines. However, it’s generally accepted that the sites don’t exhibit a level of social organization and population specialization to properly classify them as a civilization. There’s also the question of how much influx there was from Anatolia.
The Nigeria area is interesting. Independent development of agriculture. Independent development of metal working. (A form of proto-writing developed, but not till ~AD 400 so not really relevant to the idea of cradles). The earliest identifiable culture in the area is the Nok at around ~1000 BC (although there is some question of if the Nok are really a cultural predecessor/cradle of the later Yoruba/Edo/Igbo/etc.). I think Nigeria is largely regarded as an area that would have developed civilization independently if it didn’t come into contact with civilization before it reached that point (there’s evidence of trade networks reaching between Nigeria and Egypt that predate the Nok).
China’s history is a mess. A lot of people argue that there was probably a second independent development of civilization in China along the Yangtze river (in addition to the one on the Yellow river), but China’s nationalism and revisionist history make it a pain to research as they want to insist on deriving all of Chinese culture and civilization from Han Chinese and the Xia (or at the very least the Shang) Dynasty.
In the Americas there were four areas that saw high population density. The Andes and Mesoamerica obviously developed civilization. The next highest area would the Mississippi/Mound builder area and then Puget Sound. Puget Sound never really urbanized and never developed agriculture. The Mound building tradition dates back to at least ~3500 BC with Watson Brake, although you don’t really see the advanced culture and social organization until Poverty Point ~1650 BC. Poverty Point wasn’t agricultural, but it was an advanced hunter gather organization similar to what would have been needed for Göbekli Tepe. The culture also extended to about 100 sites and they had an extremely vast trading network. You can sort of see the Mound building tradition culminating with Cahokia (~AD 600) which was agricultural and, in fact, the Mississippi area was an independent development of agriculture. I think there’s still a question of if people should classify these groups as civilizations (technically, a lot of the Native American tribes don’t meet the criteria set by the cradles), but I personally feel that maybe the area should have (similar to with Norte Chico) a less strict or different definition when trying to meet all the criteria. There’s also the question of contact. The indigenous southern US has almost always had trade networks that ultimately extended into Mexico. The idea is also that European contact potentially interrupted the development of “true” civilization. There’s a case to be made, though, for sort of a cradle gray area stretching back to the Poverty Point culture (and, at the very least, you can see the Poverty Point area as a cultural cradle). One other area of interest in the Americas would be Marajó in the Amazon, which saw an independent development of agriculture and mound building but was likely interrupted by peoples from the Andes mid development and the sites were ultimately abandoned before they got anywhere.
The Kuk Swamp area of Papua New Guinea also saw an extremely early independent development of agriculture, but didn’t really develop any of the other stuff like advanced social organization, urbanization, and monumental architecture.
Polynesia should be mentioned because it’s a place a lot of people argue as a true 7th cradle, just these people can’t really agree on where or how. It’s a question of prehistoric contact you can’t really trace and then stages of social organization during European contact. Rapa Nui had high levels of social organization and even a form of writing, but may have had some form of contact with South America. Did “true” civilization only develop on one of the islands (or independently on separate)? Should you trace it back to Tonga/Samoa (the East and West Polynesia urheimat), etc. etc.
I probably forgot a bunch of stuff or remembered something wrong. It's also not completely clear-cut the exact spot that civilization emerged in Egypt or Mesopotamia (so it's actually like an area of sites), but I've written more than I was originally planning anyway
