Regarding: 6. Cultural Longevity
I have read of three main contenders being put forward in this thread for this category; Egypt, Ethiopia and China. They are popular. Fair enough. But, at most, we could say that 5,000 years is longest continuous cultural stretch here, maybe a bit more, but that's still immaterial given the contender I'd like to offer up for this category.
Unless I've missed it, no one has actually mentioned one culture and civilisation which both pre-dates all those three by tens of thousands of years and which still continues to this day. Who? The Australian Aborigines. Weighing in at a heavy duty 40,000 years and counting. And that's just the conservative consensus. Some even say 50,000-70,000 years. Egypt, China, Ethiopia - where were you back then?
Yes, I can hear you now: "The Aborigines? Those naked, bat eating, spear chuckers? A civilisation?! Don't make me laugh!" But I would contend that such views, admittedly caricatured here for the sake of brevity, are symptomatic of the gaming mentality that far too often permeates such discussions as this thread inspires. And also of a somewhat biased anthropological outlook, influenced heavily by anthropology from the European Imperial period (characteristics of which China's has demonstrated also), a school limited to the realm of said gaming criteria and arguably part of a long established, xenophobic,self congratulatory view on what constitutes "a civilisation". See any 19th century or earlier European anthropological works for more on this, and my discussion of definitions of "civilisation" below.
Furthermore, the criteria that many would use to discount this civilisation and instead promote others, like China or England's, fail to account for the sustainability of a cultural entity. Such sustainability is what has allowed the Aboriginal culture to trounce the other contenders in this category, and will allow them to do so in the indefinite future. It also discredits the projected longevity of say Britain or China's culture, which are both dependent on unsustainable growth, construction, conflict and productivity. Yet further, and related, these criteria always seem to depend on "an other"; to conquer, to convert, to colonise, to construct higher and bigger than, to define oneself in opposition to. The Aboriginal Australian culture needs not walk down this "my cock is bigger than your cock" route to "greatness".
They have been practising the same culture for some 40,000 years, perhaps longer, and continue to do so today. In case you're wondering, it's their cave paintings that have been radio-carbon dated (a process often known as C-14), specifically the pigmentation of the paint, to give us a figure of 40,000 years. The most renowned was by Sue O'Connor at the Australian National University, conducted on buried pigment found at Carpenter's Gap, in the Windjana Gorge National Park. New techniques, such as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) have been used to confirm this date of O'Connor's. But there are also reams of indirect evidence pointing to earlier dating. Sure, you could say that cave paintings in southern France and northern Italy, which have been dated with similar techniques, go back as far as 35,000 years. But these are not examples of continuous cultural activity.
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So much for the age of their culture, but are they really "a civilisation"?
Well, let's look into some definitions, see whether these are worthy, and then how the Aboriginal Australians measure up. "A civilisation" is often defined by its complexity of society; its detachment from the 'natural order' of the animal world; its settlement characteristics; its agricultural activity, providing surplus food, thereby allowing a division of labour; its advanced development of the arts; its ability to conduct trade; presence of written forms of communication and record making and so on.
These popular definitions of what constitutes "a civilisation" are pretty recent in the grand scheme of human history. They dovetail too conveniently for objectivity's sake into a modern, Anglo-Saxon defined, capitalist, productivity focused mentality. See for example the division of labour definition, which assumes and requires that one group of humans lord it over another in a master/slave, employer/employee, monarch/subject, priest/faithful, landowner/peasant relationship; be that under a feudal, dynastic, capitalist, oligarchic, theocratic, or any other such system. See also the complexity of society definition, which allows for and creates the same kind of exploitative relationships.
These definitions are biased in favour of the powerful. They are biased not in favour of human co-operation, but in favour of human domination. They are very much aligned to 'the law of the jungle' or 'natural order', which civilisation is supposed to, according to these definitions, detach humans from.
It is not surprising that they were largely coined during the Colonial and Imperial era, say 1500s to the present day, or, in the case of the Chinese, during their lengthy, Imperial Dynastic periods. They fail to account for other value systems that people have lived and organised themselves by for millenia. The 'infantrymen', if you like, for the assessment of a people fitting into such definitions were largely anthropologists, a field of study that became increasingly codified during more modern, Imperial times and has always been quite subjective. Their observations far too often (until just recently) measured people against capitalist or mercantile values, values which really are a small blip on the vast expanse of human activity.
And if these definitions are not recent, they are even more horrendously subjective, or simply ignorant, such as that of Herodotus' civilised / barbarian dichotomy, or those of the dynastic Chinese historians, which look through a similarly tinted lens. They, along with the definition of a civilisation requiring a written form of communication and record keeping, all lay the foundations for conquest, or further dominion of the 'civilised' over the 'barbaric', or the 'advanced' over the 'backward'.
They were all used to enact the 'natural order' in human relations. They didn't get us away from the law of jungle at all. They were all used to justify mass murder (through war, conquest and oppression), to justify subjugation (under the guise of 'civilising' a people) and exploitation (under the same guise). Isn't it hard to equate these three activities with their own related, popular notions of what it means to be "civilised" and above such animalistic "barbarity"? Don't these definitions therefore contain some serious inward contradictions?
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So which objective, non-contradictory and value free definitions of "civilisation" might we be happy with?
Well, they are, of course, hard to come by. In asking for a domination free definition, for example, we are of course placing a value of our own into the mix. At least we're being consistent in thought and action by detaching mankind from the natural order however. In this way, and by degrees, some definitions are more generally acceptable than others.
So, if we accept that society must be predicated upon human co-operation, and not merely domination as seen in 'the natural order', then "the settlement definition" would get the thumbs up. Check "the Abos" in for this then. They have had co-operative settlements for those tens of thousands of years mentioned above and there is no evidence, then or now, of domination, exploitative divisions of labour, nor hierarchy being a prerequisite for said settlements (as dogs, lions or other animals would enact).
The capacity to trade can be checked too upon these terms. The varying tribes of these peoples have been shown to trade a variety of handicrafts through all manner of archaeological finds. The mere presence and creation of such handicrafts as musical instruments, forms of jewellery, paintings and hides demonstrates the luxury of free time beyond merely eeking out a living, pointing out that agriculture isn't needed to "civilise" a people either.
The development of the arts can also be acceptable, for it requires no domination, conquest, bloodbaths or internal contradictions. Check them in here too then. We already know about their art, through painting, music, dance and story telling.
On this note, let's consider the Aboriginal "Dreamtime" here, for it elaborates on the spiritual and philosophical complexity of their culture and civilisation. In this cohesive and comprehensive belief system, or mythology as its sometimes described, we can see a philosophical approach to both time and consciousness. And not only human consciousness. We can see cosmological explanation and astronomical observation, through the resultant paintings, dances, poetry and stories. Those who have looked earnestly into these complimentary Dreamtime art forms have found that they bear out both astronomical observations of the night's sky and also physical mapping qualities of the surrounding landscape, making their's arguably the first ever maps that humans ever created. We can see a deeply symbolic Cosmogony (creation story) to equal that told by the Judeo-Christian or Hindu cultures also. These have all provided the Aboriginal Australians with meaning in their lives, and a meaning that requires no "an other". And, finally, we can see a sustainable way of life that does not destroy the environment that supports it, thereby ensuring that it may live on well into the indefinite future. Something that all the civilisations in the OP simply cannot lay claim to.
And all this tens of thousands of years before the cultures and civilisations of China, Egypt and Ethiopia began to stir. And counting, for none of those mighty barbaric "civilisations" have manage to eradicate them.
That's like saying that we don't need the British because te Chinese would of started the industrial revolution sooner or later.
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