The
development of speech-language pathology into a profession took
different paths in the various regions of the world. Three identifiable
trends influenced the evolution of speech-language pathology in the
United States during the late 19th century to early 20th century: the
elocution movement, scientific revolution, and the rise of
professionalism. Groups of "speech correctionists" formed in the early 1900s. The American Academy of Speech Correction was founded in 1925, which became ASHA in 1978.
Profession
Speech-language
pathologists (SLPs) provide a wide range of services, mainly on an
individual basis, but also as support for families, support groups, and
providing information for the general public. SLPs work to assess levels
of communication needs, make diagnoses based on the assessments, and
then treat the diagnoses or address the needs.
Speech/language services begin with initial screening for communication
and/or swallowing disorders and continue with assessment and diagnosis,
consultation for the provision of advice regarding management,
intervention, and treatment, and providing counseling and other followup
services for these disorders. Services are provided in the following
areas:
Developmental language and early feeding neurodevelopment and prevention;
Cognitive aspects of communication (e.g., attention, memory, problem-solving, executive functions);
Speech (phonation, articulation, fluency, resonance, and voice including aeromechanical components of respiration);
Language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,
and pragmatic/social aspects of communication) including comprehension
and expression in oral, written, graphic, and manual modalities; language processing; preliteracy and language-based literacy skills, phonological awareness;
Swallowing or other upper aerodigestive functions such as infant
feeding and aeromechanical events (evaluation of esophageal function is
for the purpose of referral to medical professionals);
Voice (hoarseness, dysphonia), poor vocal volume (hypophonia),
abnormal (e.g., rough, breathy, strained) vocal quality. Research
demonstrates voice therapy
to be especially helpful with certain patient populations; individuals
with Parkinson's Disease often develop voice issues as a result of their
disease.
Sensory awareness related to communication, swallowing, or other upper aerodigestive functions.
Speech, language, and swallowing disorders result from a variety of causes, such as a stroke, brain injury, hearing loss, developmental delay, a cleft palate, cerebral palsy, or emotional issues.
A common misconception is that speech–language pathology is
restricted to the treatment of articulation disorders (e.g., helping
English-speaking individuals enunciate the traditionally difficult r) and/or the treatment of individuals who stutter
but, in fact, speech–language pathology is concerned with a broad scope
of speech, language, literacy, swallowing, and voice issues involved in
communication, some of which include:
Word-finding and other semantic issues, either as a result of a
specific language impairment (SLI) such as a language delay or as a
secondary characteristic of a more general issue such as dementia.
Social communication difficulties involving how people communicate or interact with others (pragmatics).
Language impairments, including difficulties creating sentences that are grammatical (syntax) and modifying word meaning (morphology).
Literacy impairments (reading and writing) related to the
letter-to-sound relationship (phonics), the word-to-meaning relationship
(semantics), and understanding the ideas presented in a text (reading comprehension).
Voice difficulties, such as a raspy voice, a voice that is too soft,
or other voice difficulties that negatively impact a person's social or
professional performance.
Cognitive impairments (e.g. attention, memory, executive function) to the extent that they interfere with communication.
Parent, caregiver, and other communication partner coaching.
Swallowing disorders include difficulties in any phase of the
swallowing process (i.e., oral, pharyngeal, esophageal), as well as
functional dysphagia and feeding disorders. Swallowing disorders can occur at any age and can stem from multiple causes.
Multi-discipline collaboration
SLPs
collaborate with other health care professionals, often working as part
of a multidisciplinary team. They can provide information and referrals
to audiologists, physicians, dentists, nurses, nurse practitioners, occupational therapists, rehabilitation psychologists, dietitians, educators, behavior consultants (applied behavior analysis), and parents as dictated by the individual client's needs. For example, the treatment for patients with cleft lip and palate
often requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Speech–language
pathologists can be very beneficial in helping resolve speech problems
associated with cleft lip and palate. Research has indicated that
children who receive early language intervention are less likely to
develop compensatory error patterns later in life, although speech
therapy outcomes are usually better when surgical treatment is performed
earlier. Another area of collaboration relates to auditory processing disorders,
where SLPs can collaborate in assessments and provide intervention
where there is evidence of speech, language, and/or other
cognitive-communication disorders.
Working environments
SLPs work in a variety of clinical and educational settings. SLPs work in public and private hospitals, private practices, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), long-term acute care (LTAC) facilities, hospice,
and home healthcare. SLPs may also work as part of the support
structure in the education system, working in both public and private schools, colleges, and universities. Some SLPs also work in community health, providing services at prisons and young offenders' institutions or providing expert testimony in applicable court cases.
Some SLPs' working environments include one-on-one time with the client.
Following ASHA's 2005 approval of the delivery of speech/language
services via video conference or telepractice, SLPs in the United States
have begun to use this service model.
Children with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN)
are particularly at risk of not being heard because of communication
challenges. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can explain the
significance of supporting communication as a tool for the child to
shape and influence choices available to them in their lives, even
though it is advised that children with SLCN can and should be actively
involved as equal partners in decision-making about their communication
needs. Building these skills is especially crucial for SLPs working in
settings related to traditional education.
Research
SLPs
conduct research related to communication sciences and disorders,
swallowing disorders, or other upper aerodigestive functions.
Experimental, empirical, and scientific methodologies that build
on hypothesis testing and logical, deductive reasoning have dominated
research in speech-language pathology. Other types of research in the
field are complemented by qualitative research.
Education and training
United States
In
the United States, speech–language pathologists must hold a master's
degree from an ASHA-accredited program. Following graduation and passing
a nation-wide board exam, SLPs typically begin their Clinical
Fellowship Year, during which they are granted a provisional license and
receive guidance from their supervisor. At the end of this process,
SLPs may choose to apply for ASHA's Certificate of Clinical Competence
and apply for full state licensure. SLPs may additionally choose to earn
advanced degrees such as a clinical doctorate in speech–language
pathology, PhD, or EdD.
Methods of assessment
Many
approaches exist to assess language, communication, speech and
swallowing. Two main aspects of assessment can be to determine the
extent of breakdown (impairment-level), or how communication can be
supported (functional level). When evaluating impairment-based level of
breakdown, therapists are trained to use a cognitive neuropsychological
approach to assessment, to precisely determine what aspect of
communication is impaired. Some therapists use assessments that are
based on historic anatomical models of language, that have since been
shown to be unreliable. These tools are often preferred by therapists
working within a medical model, where medics request a 'type' of
impairment, and a 'severity' rating. The broad tools available allow
clinicians to precisely select the aspect of communication that they
wish to assess.
Because school-based speech therapy is run under state guidelines
and funds, the process of assessment and qualification is more strict.
To qualify for in-school speech therapy, students must meet the state's
criteria on language testing and speech standardization. Due to such
requirements, some students may not be assessed in an efficient time
frame or their needs may be undermined by criteria. For a private
clinic, students are more likely to qualify for therapy because it is a
paid service with more availability.
Clients and patients
Speech–language pathologists work with clients and patients who may present with a wide range of issues.
Infants and children
Premature
infants are at higher risk of feeding and later language needs and SLTS
work with this cohort to prevent developmental difficulties and support
neonatal care
Infants with injuries due to complications at birth, feeding and swallowing difficulties, including dysphagia
In
the US, some children are eligible to receive speech therapy services,
including assessment and lessons through the public school system. If
not, private therapy is readily available through personal lessons with a
qualified speech–language pathologist or the growing field of
telepractice.
Teleconferencing tools such as Skype are being used more commonly as a
means to access remote locations in private therapy practice, such as in
the geographically diverse south island of New Zealand.
More at-home or combination treatments have become readily available to
address specific types of articulation disorders. The use of mobile
applications in speech therapy is also growing as an avenue to bring
treatment into the home.
United Kingdom
In the UK, children are entitled to an assessment by local NHS
speech- and language-therapy teams, usually after referral by health
visitors or education settings, but parents are also entitled to request
an assessment directly.
If treatment is appropriate, an educational plan will be drawn up.
Speech therapists often play a role in multi-disciplinary teams when a
child has speech delay or disorder as part of a wider health condition.
The Children's Commissioner for England reported in June 2019 that there was a postcode lottery;
£291.65 a year per head was spent on services in some areas, while the
budget in some areas was £30.94 or less. In 2018, 193,971 children in
English primary schools were on the special educational needs register
needing speech-therapy services.
Speech and language therapists work in acute settings and are often
integrated into the MDT in multiple areas of speciality for neonatal,
children and adult services. Areas include but not limited to; neonatal
care, respiratory, ENT, gastrointestinal, stroke, Neurology,ICU,
oncology and geriatric care
Historically, a civilization has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies, or hunter-gatherers;
however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within
civilizations themselves. Civilizations are organized densely-populated
settlements divided into hierarchicalsocial classes with a ruling elite and a subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of the nature, including over other human beings.
The word civilization relates to the Latin civitas or 'city'. As the National Geographic Society has explained it: "This is why the most basic definition of the word civilization is 'a society made up of cities.'"
The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.
The English word civilization comes from the French civilisé ('civilized'), from Latin: civilis ('civil'), related to civis ('citizen') and civitas ('city'). The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the early modern period. In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical.
He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea
of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every
sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress
helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of
all progress".
Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century.
The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in
the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757,
by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation". The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French Revolution, "civilization" was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century,
but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes
just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made
countable in the context of ethnography).
Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a
"medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an
oxymoron. Using the terms "civilization" and "culture" as equivalents
are controversial and generally rejected so that for example some types
of culture are not normally described as civilizations.
Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as
an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture
and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, Emile. Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature,
and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or
approximation to an original discursive or pre-rational natural unity"
(see noble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious,
rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit".
Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in
material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such
as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.
Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural traits. Andrew Nikiforuk
argues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the
energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and
considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations.
All civilizations have depended on agriculture
for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early
civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources.
The traditional "surplus model" postulates that cereal farming
results in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when
people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation.
It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural
production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have
been very rare. Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time.
Research from the Journal of Political Economy
contradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural
gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal
farming produced civilization because of the appropriability
of yearly harvest. Rural populations that could only grow cereals could
be taxed allowing for a taxing elite and urban development. This also
had a negative effect on rural population, increasing relative
agricultural output per farmer. Farming efficiency created food surplus
and sustained the food surplus through decreasing rural population
growth in favour of urban growth. Suitability of highly productive roots
and tubers was in fact a curse of plenty, which prevented the emergence
of states and impeded economic development.
A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests
and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus
of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of
human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some
places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among
some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture.
It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social
organization and division of labour predates plant and animal
domestication.
Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word civilization is sometimes defined as "living in cities". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.
Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class,
normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the
surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories.
Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of
ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one
place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tariffs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through a gift economy supplemented by limited barter systems. By the early Iron Age, contemporary civilizations developed money
as a medium of exchange for increasingly complex transactions. In a
village, the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer
compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a
city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the
cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat and
the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally
acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the
same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to
ensure that they are fulfilled. From the days of the earliest
monetarized civilizations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems
have benefited the social and political elites.
The transition from simpler to more complex economies does not
necessarily mean an improvement in the living standards of the populace.
For example, although the Middle Ages is often portrayed as an era of
decline from the Roman Empire, studies have shown that the average
stature of males in the Middle Ages (c. 500 to 1500 CE) was greater than
it was for males during the preceding Roman Empire and the succeeding Early Modern Period (c. 1500 to 1800 CE). Also, the Plains Indians
of North America in the 19th century were taller than their "civilized"
American and European counterparts. The average stature of a population
is a good measurement of the adequacy of its access to necessities,
especially food, and its freedom from disease.
Writing, developed first by people in Sumer,
is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the
rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state".
Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records.
Like money, the writing was necessitated by the size of the population
of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not
all personally acquainted with each other. However, writing is not
always necessary for civilization, as shown by the Inca
civilization of the Andes, which did not use writing at all but except
for a complex recording system consisting of knotted strings of
different lengths and colours: the "Quipus", and still functioned as a civilized society.
Aided by their division of labour and central government planning,
civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These
include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.
Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached
are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as
opposed to trading or manufacturing capacities, the territorial
extensions of its power, the complexity of its division of labour, and the carrying capacity of its urban centres. Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and tort-based legal systems, art, architecture, mathematics, scientific understanding, metallurgy, political structures, and organized religion.
As a contrast with other societies
The
idea of civilization implies a progression or development from a
previous "uncivilized" state. Traditionally, cultures that defined
themselves as "civilized" often did so in contrast to other societies or
human groupings viewed as less civilized, calling the latter barbarians, savages, and primitives. Indeed, the modern Western idea of civilization developed as a contrast to the indigenous cultures European settlers encountered during the European colonization of the Americas and Australia. The term "primitive," though once used in anthropology,
has now been largely condemned by anthropologists because of its
derogatory connotations and because it implies that the cultures it
refers to are relics of a past time that do not change or progress.
Because of this, societies regarding themselves as "civilized"
have sometimes sought to dominate and assimilate "uncivilized" cultures
into a "civilized" way of living.
In the 19th century, the idea of European culture as "civilized" and
superior to "uncivilized" non-European cultures was fully developed, and
civilization became a core part of European identity.
The idea of civilization can also be used as a justification for
dominating another culture and dispossessing a people of their land. For
example, in Australia,
British settlers justified the displacement of Indigenous Australians
by observing that the land appeared uncultivated and wild, which to them
reflected that the inhabitants were not civilized enough to "improve"
it. The behaviours and modes of subsistence that characterize civilization have been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade,
and by the introduction of new technologies to cultures that did not
previously have them. Though aspects of culture associated with
civilization can be freely adopted through contact between cultures,
since early modern times Eurocentric ideals of "civilization" have been
widely imposed upon cultures through coercion and dominance. These
ideals complemented a philosophy that assumed there were innate differences between "civilized" and "uncivilized" peoples.
"Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society,
not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a
specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and
arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate
cultures, including a state-based decision-making apparatus, a literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion and complex customs of education, coercion and control associated with maintaining the elite.
The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency
to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them
into the civilization, a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam
Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many
nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that
person's broadest cultural identity.
A Blue Shield International mission in Libya during the war in 2011 to protect the cultural assets there.
It is precisely the protection of this cultural identity that is
becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally.
According to international law, the United Nations and UNESCO try to set up and enforce relevant rules. The aim is to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity and also the cultural identity, especially in the case of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International,
the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological
warfare. The target of the attack is often the opponent's cultural
identity, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It
is also intended to destroy the particularly sensitive cultural memory
(museums, archives, monuments, etc.), the grown cultural diversity, and
the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or community.
Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and
have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century
philosopher Oswald Spengler, uses the German word Kultur,
"culture", for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believed a
civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol.
Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often
supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new
cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the
decline of a culture as "the most external and artificial states of
which a species of developed humanity is capable".
This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History,
which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21
civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally
declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a
"creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some
important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes.
Samuel P. Huntington
defines civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and
the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which
distinguishes humans from other species".
Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system,
i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analysed that work
in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as
networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined
by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social and cultural
interactions among them. Any organization is a complex social system
and a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard
against superficial and misleading analogies in the study and
description of civilizations.
Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities,
including economic relations, cultural exchanges and
political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on
different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth
century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres.
Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, India and China,
were well established 2000 years ago when these civilizations scarcely
shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. The
first evidence of such long-distance trade is in the ancient world. During the Uruk period, Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan. Resin found later in the Royal Cemetery at Ur is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.
Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single "world system", a process known as globalization.
Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are
economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many
ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of
integration – cultural, technological, economic, political, or
military-diplomatic – is the key indicator in determining the extent of a
civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE.
Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East
and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European
colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by
the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be
culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or homogeneous,
like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of
civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of
cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to
the Crusading movement
as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is
that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.
The notion of human history as a succession of "civilizations" is an entirely modern one. 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.
Nonetheless, developments in the Neolithic stage, such as agriculture
and sedentary settlement, were critical to the development of modern
conceptions of civilization.
The Natufian culture in the Levantine corridor provides the earliest case of a Neolithic Revolution, with the planting of cereal crops attested from c. 11,000 BCE. The earliest neolithic technology and lifestyle were established first in Western Asia (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), later in the Yellow River and Yangtze basins in China (for example the Peiligang and Pengtoushan cultures), and from these cores spread across Eurasia. Mesopotamia
is the site of the earliest civilizations developing from 7,400 years
ago. This area has been evaluated by Beverley Milton-Edwards as having
"inspired some of the most important developments in human history
including the invention of the wheel, the building of the earliest
cities and the development of written cursive script". Similar pre-civilized "neolithic revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in northwestern South America (the Caral-Supe civilization) and in Mesoamerica. The Black Sea area served as a cradle of European civilization. The site of Solnitsata – a prehistoric fortified (walled) stone settlement (prehistoric proto-city) (5500–4200 BCE) – is believed by some archaeologists to be the oldest known town in present-day Europe.
The 8.2 Kiloyear Arid Event and the 5.9 Kiloyear Inter-pluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread of deserts. This climate change
shifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities,
which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the
appearance of walled cities, seen by some as a characteristic of early
civilizations.
This "urban revolution"—a term introduced by Childe in the 1930s—from the 4th millennium BCE, marked the beginning of the accumulation of transferable economic surpluses, which helped economies and cities develop. Urban revolutions were associated with the state monopoly of violence, the appearance of a warrior, or soldier, class and endemic warfare (a state of continual or frequent warfare), the rapid development of hierarchies, and the use of human sacrifice.
The civilized urban revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentism, the domestication of grains, plants and animals, the permanence of settlements and development of lifestyles that facilitated economies of scale and accumulation of surplus production by particular social sectors. The transition from complex cultures to civilizations,
while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of
state structures, in which power was further monopolized by an elite ruling class who practiced human sacrifice.
Outside the Old World, development took place independently in the Pre-Columbian Americas. Urbanization in the Caral-Supe civilization in what is now coastal Peru began about 3500 BCE. In North America, the Olmec civilization emerged about 1200 BCE; the oldest known Mayan city, located in what is now Guatemala, dates to about 750 BCE. and Teotihuacan (near the modern Mexico City) was one of the largest cities in the world in 350 CE, with a population of about 125,000.
The Bronze Age collapse
was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of
new civilizations emerged, culminating in a period from the 8th to the
3rd century BCE which Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age, presented as a critical transitional phase leading to classical civilization.
A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in Western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world, incorporating earlier cultures into the technological and industrial society of the present.
Civilizations are traditionally understood as ending in one of two
ways; either through incorporation into another expanding civilization
(e.g. as Ancient Egypt was incorporated into Hellenistic Greek, and
subsequently Roman civilizations), or by collapsing and reverting to a
simpler form of living, as happens in so-called Dark Ages.
There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of
civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general
theory.
Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah influenced theories of the analysis, growth, and decline of the Islamic civilization. He suggested repeated invasions from nomadic peoples limited development and led to social collapse.Barbarian invasions played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire.
Edward Gibbon's work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
is a well-known and detailed analysis of the fall of Roman
civilization. Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was
the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks
in 1453 CE. For Gibbon, "The decline of Rome was the natural and
inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the
principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the
extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the
artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of
its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead
of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be
surprised that it has subsisted for so long".
Theodor Mommsen in his History of Rome suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis", "growth", "senescence", "collapse" and "decay".
Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West rejected Petrarch's
chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight
"mature civilizations". Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop
into imperialistic civilizations, which expand and ultimately collapse,
with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.
Arnold J. Toynbee in his A Study of History
suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations,
including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all
civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The
cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.
Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity,
due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they
would decline when further increases actually produced a negative
return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd
century CE.
Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayevet al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends
suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian
civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's
"fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the
initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth
rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a
result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without
great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the
population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During
the intermediate phase, the increasing population growth
leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels,
it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues
stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of
the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase
the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the
final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease
of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases,
state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to
control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population.
Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and
demographic and civilization collapse.
Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians
that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but
because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier
generated its own nemesis by making them a more sophisticated and
dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater
revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time
repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the
Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be
applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate and others.
Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization,[89]
argues from mostly archaeological evidence that the collapse of Roman
civilization in western Europe had deleterious impacts on the living
standards of the population, unlike some historians who downplay this.
The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing for the
elite disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar impacts
have been postulated for the Dark Age after the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.
Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization, using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, paleoecology,
and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series
of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought
and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the
disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms, which began a spiral of
decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons
for civilization today.
Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "a review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit
their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a
significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society".
Thomas Homer-Dixon considers the fall in the energy return on investments.
The energy expended to energy yield ratio is central to limiting the
survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated
strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy
environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this
amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources
or collapse.
Feliks Koneczny
in his work "On the Plurality of Civilizations" calls his study the
science on civilizations. He asserts that civilizations fall not because
they must or there exist some cyclical or a "biological" life span and
that there stil exist two ancient civilizations – Brahmin-Hindu and
Chinese – which are not ready to fall any time soon. Koneczny claimed
that civilizations cannot be mixed into hybrids, an inferior
civilization when given equal rights within a highly developed
civilization will overcome it. One of Koneczny's claims in his study on
civilizations is that "a person cannot be civilized in two or more ways"
without falling into what he calls an "abcivilized state" (as in
abnormal). He also stated that when two or more civilizations exist next
to one another and as long as they are vital, they will be in an
existential combat imposing its own "method of organizing social life"
upon the other.
Absorbing alien "method of organizing social life" that is civilization
and giving it equal rights yields a process of decay and decomposition.
According to political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, the 21st century will be characterized by a clash of civilizations, which he believes will replace the conflicts between nation-states
and ideologies that were prominent in the 19th and 20th centuries.
However, this viewpoint been strongly challenged by others such as Edward Said, Muhammed Asadi and Amartya Sen. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world
and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more
liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology,
although they note that this lack of tolerance is likely to lead to an
eventual rejection of (true) democracy. In Identity and Violence
Sen questions if people should be divided along the lines of a supposed
"civilization", defined by religion and culture only. He argues that
this ignores the many others identities that make up people and leads to
a focus on differences.
Cultural Historian Morris Berman argues in Dark Ages America: the End of Empire
that in the corporate consumerist United States, the very factors that
once propelled it to greatness―extreme individualism, territorial and
economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth―have pushed the
United States across a critical threshold where collapse is inevitable.
Politically associated with over-reach, and as a result of the
environmental exhaustion and polarization of wealth between rich and
poor, he concludes the current system is fast arriving at a situation
where continuation of the existing system saddled with huge deficits and
a hollowed-out economy is physically, socially, economically and
politically impossible. Although developed in much more depth, Berman's thesis is similar in some ways to that of Urban Planner, Jane Jacobs
who argues that the five pillars of United States culture are in
serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective
practice of science; taxation and government; and the self-regulation of
the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues,
is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism and the
growing gulf between rich and poor.
Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen
argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of
the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful,
unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion.
Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he
defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges
from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more
or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require
the routine importation of food and other necessities of life".
This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues,
stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local
resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and
expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized,
hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.
The Kardashev scale
classifies civilizations based on their level of technological
advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a
civilization is able to harness. The scale is only hypothetical, but it
puts energy consumption in a cosmic perspective. The Kardashev scale
makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced
than any currently known to exist.
Non-human civilizations
The
current scientific consensus is that human beings are the only animal
species with the cognitive ability to create civilizations that has
emerged on Earth. A recent thought experiment, the silurian hypothesis,
however, considers whether it would "be possible to detect an
industrial civilization in the geological record" given the paucity of
geological information about eras before the quaternary.
Astronomers speculate about the existence of communicating with
intelligent civilizations within and beyond the Milky Way galaxy,
usually using variants of the Drake equation. They conduct searches for such intelligences – such as for technological traces, called "technosignatures". The proposed proto-scientific field "xenoarchaeology"
is concerned with the study of artifact remains of non-human
civilizations to reconstruct and interpret past lives of alien societies
if such get discovered and confirmed scientifically.
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