The Development Of Civilization Essay Research Paper

The Development Of Civilization Essay, Research Paper The Development of Civilization in the Ancient World In order to understand the evolution of civilization in humans, a long and almost as diverse process, complete with downfalls and dead-ends, as the physical evolution of mankind itself, we must first understand the conditions of life in that time period. Other factors we have to account for are the different physical capabilities and limitations of man and the climactic conditions of the ancient world. The evolution has gone from simple groups of hunters to great empires to advanced forms of government such as democracy and communism. However, the main concept that has driven men to learn to work together is survival. Man, due to physical limitations, is unable to

survive on his own. Men must interact with each other in order to survive. This common thread in the evolution of civilization has enabled man to develop to the level he has, from a time when cave drawings were considered historical records and had religious significance to an age when we have readily available at our fingertips the temperature of a city two thousand miles away. In this essay, I am going to examine how mankind went from bands of hunters to the great cities that sprung all over Asia, the Middle East and southeastern Europe in ancient times. In examining this evolution, I will explain how man has become the in one sense the high end in evolution, in his ability to manipulate nature, and the low point in evolution, in his ability and apparent willingness to destroy

himself. Also, any reference to the word man is implied in the general sense of the entire human race, male and female alike. To begin this essay, I am going to discuss the need of man for other men. Whether the dependence that men have on each other is a positive or negative aspect of mankind is open for debate. However there is almost no one in this day and age, at least in western civilization, who is totally independent of others to survive. Not one of us is able to emotionally survive (totally ignoring the physical aspects of survival) loneliness. This eventually leads to madness and self-destruction. However, the primary necessity that led to the development of civilization was not the mental factor, it was the physical factor. Men learned that in order to survive they were

going to have to work together. Men learned that better cloaks could be made if one man made them all and that more and better food could be caught or gathered and eaten if one man or a group of men caught or collected all of it. All of these realizations led to the development of the earliest communities of people. Men learned to work together in order to work more efficiently and to make life easier. Mankind could never have developed into what it is today if it wasn?t for its ability to work together, for this ability was the ultimate separation point between us and animals. By working together, man was able to improve on his efficiency in food production. Man switched from simply gathering food and simply gambling that the next place he went would have the food he needed to

survive. Now man began to insure that the food would always be there when he needed it by beginning to farm and domesticate animals. These farming techniques and the division of labor brought mankind to a turning point in his development. Animals, unlike humans spend every waking hour of their lives trying to survive and men did that until it was no longer necessary because they had enough food, if not more than enough to survive and so man was actually able to sit down and think about things, to consider, interpret and explore. One of the greatest evolutionary accomplishments came from these accomplishments: spoken communication. Spoken communication, as advanced as ours, is one of the things that separate us from animals, because thoughts are worthless if there is no way to