Cradle of civilization

• 1. Introduction

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  A cradle of civilization is a place where a complex society arose on its own, without borrowing the idea from anyone else. The phrase is slippery, though. Classical Greece is known as the cradle of Western civilization. Rome has sometimes been given the same title. Book titles have stretched the phrase further, from Indian nationalism in a 1995 book to Taiwanese nationalism in a 2002 one. A 1921 book made the claim for ancient Britain. The Urantia Book even awards the title to what it calls the second Eden. In the study of human prehistory the meaning is much stricter. Scholars generally accept six cradles, spread across two hemispheres. What did they have in common? Which came first? And why did scholars once believe that civilization had only one birthplace?

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• 2. Villages Before Cities

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  Around 12,000 BC in the Levant, the Natufian culture gave up wandering and settled down. By 10,000 BC it had grown into an agricultural society. Reliable water was the key. Good conditions for hunting, fishing and gathering cereals gave people a wide range of food, and that stability encouraged permanent villages.

  The first proto-urban settlements, with several thousand inhabitants, appeared in the Neolithic, which began in Western Asia in 10,000 BC. Scholars set a demanding test for the word civilization. It means a complex society with a state, social ranks, cities and symbolic systems of communication that go beyond speech or signs, namely writing and graphic arts. Every cradle rested on farmers who grew more than they ate, with a possible exception on the Peruvian coast. That surplus fed rulers, priests and the public works of early cities.

  Writing offers one yardstick for when civilization began. Tie the rise of civilization to writing growing out of proto-writing, and the earliest cases are the Near Eastern Chalcolithic of the 4th millennium BC and Harappa in the Indus Valley, around 3,300 BC. Chinese proto-writing, which evolved into the oracle bone script, comes next. Mesoamerican writing systems follow from about 900 BC.

  Scholars once thought civilization began in the Fertile Crescent and spread outward by influence. They now believe it arose independently at several locations in both hemispheres, on different timeframes. Sedentary and nomadic communities kept interacting rather than living as sealed groups. Today six areas are generally identified: the Fertile Crescent, the Nile Valley, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the North China Plain, the Andean Coast and the Mesoamerican Gulf Coast.

  Gordon Childe described civilization as the product of two successive revolutions. The Neolithic Revolution of Western Asia produced settled communities. The urban revolution, also first seen in Western Asia, added dense settlement, specialized trades, social classes, exploited surpluses, monumental public buildings and writing.

  The records challenge that tidy sequence. Dense cities are not attested in Egypt's Old Kingdom, unlike Mesopotamia, and the Maya area had a dispersed population. The Incas lacked writing, though they kept records with quipus. Monumental architecture often came before any sign of village settlement. In present-day Louisiana, researchers found that mostly nomadic cultures organized over generations to build earthwork mounds at seasonal settlements as early as 3400 BC. Civilization may therefore be better pictured as one accelerated process, running from incipient agriculture to the Oriental Bronze Age.

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• 3. Between Two Rivers

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  Jericho, in the Jordan Valley, is believed to be the world's earliest established city. Settlement there began around 9600 BC, and fortifications followed around 6800 BC. Jericho is counted among the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlements. By 10,200 BC, fully developed Neolithic cultures had emerged in the Fertile Crescent, and the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic B phase ran from 7600 to 6000 BC. These cultures spread eastward into South Asia and westward into Europe and North Africa.

  The Fertile Crescent is a crescent-shaped band of elevated terrain in West Asia. It takes in regions of modern Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, and it reaches to the Zagros Mountains in Iran. Göbekli Tepe, dated to 9500-8000 BC, and Çatalhöyük, dated to 7500-5700 BC, are early Neolithic sites in the region. Current theories name it the first and oldest cradle of civilization.

  In Mesopotamia, the meeting of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers produced rich soil and water for irrigation. Neolithic cultures emerged there from 8000 BC onwards. The societies around these rivers are the earliest known non-nomadic agrarian societies. The Ubaid period, from about 6500 to 3800 BC, is the earliest known period on the alluvial plain, though older ones probably lie hidden under the alluvium. Urbanization began during Ubaid times, and intensive irrigated agriculture took hold in the south.

  The Uruk period, from 4000 to 3100 BC, takes its name from the Sumerian city of Uruk. Proto-writing in the region dates to around 3800 BC, the earliest texts to 3300 BC, and early cuneiform to 3000 BC. Copper began to replace painted pottery in popularity, alongside cylinder seals. Sumerian cities were probably theocratic, headed by a priest-king called an ensi. He was assisted by a council of elders that included both men and women. By the 31st century BC, Uruk, Ur, Kish and Eridu housed tens of thousands of people, and Susa in Elam followed. Elamite written records begin around 3200 BC.

  The Jemdet Nasr period, from 3100 to 2900 BC, was a formative stage for cuneiform. The oldest clay tablets come from Uruk and date slightly earlier. The script began as pictographs, then moved toward simpler, more abstract designs and acquired its iconic wedge shape.

  Around 2900 BC the Early Dynastic Period began, and control of the city-states shifted. Power moved from a temple establishment led by a priestly En to a more secular ruler called a Lugal, meaning great man. Legendary Lugals such as Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh supposedly reigned shortly before the historic record opens around 2700 BC. The Sumerian King List, from the early second millennium BC, strings together dynasties from different cities. Later Mesopotamian kings used it to legitimize their rule, but much of it is probably fictional.

  Eannatum, the Sumerian king of Lagash, established the first verifiable empire in history in 2500 BC. Around 2350 BC the Semitic-speaking Akkadian empire emerged under Sargon the Great, and it reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC. After it fell, the Third Dynasty of Ur briefly reasserted Sumerian dominance. Sumerian hegemony collapsed around 2004 BC. The Akkadian-speaking peoples coalesced into Assyria in the north and Babylonia in the south, and the Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Assyrian-Babylonian population.

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• 4. The Nile and Beyond

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  Around 8000 BC, natural climate change began drying the pastoral lands of northern Africa, according to geological evidence and computer climate modeling. The drying eventually formed the Sahara. It pushed the early ancestors of the Egyptians to settle more permanently around the Nile. By around 6000 BC, Neolithic settlements appeared all over Egypt. Studies of morphological, genetic and archaeological data attribute them to migrants from the Fertile Crescent who brought agriculture. The oldest fully developed Neolithic culture in Egypt is Fayum A, which began around 5500 BC.

  By about 5500 BC, small tribes along the Nile had grown into a series of related cultures reaching as far south as Sudan. They are identified by pottery and by personal items such as combs, bracelets and beads. The Badari culture of northern Upper Egypt was known for fine ceramics, stone tools and the use of copper. The oldest known domesticated bovine in Africa comes from Fayum, around 4400 BC. The Naqada culture followed, and in its first period the Egyptians were already importing obsidian from Ethiopia.

  Egyptian civilization begins in the Gerzeh period of the Naqada culture, around 3500 BC. Farming produced most of the food, and the larger settlements grew to cities of about 5,000 residents. Builders used mud brick, the arch and recessed walls, while copper increasingly replaced stone in tools and weapons. Symbols on Gerzean pottery resemble early hieroglyphs. By 3300 BC the land was divided into Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the north. Around 3150 BC King Narmer defeated his enemies in the Delta and merged the two kingdoms under his rule.

  Genetic evidence points to the Horn of Africa as a source of a Y-chromosome lineage called M35/215. It moved north into Egypt and the Levant, in step with the spread of the Afrasian language family, and added a new component to Egypt's population 17,000 years ago. At Nabta Playa in Upper Egypt, megalithic structures were aligned with the heliacal rising of Sirius and helped calibrate the yearly calendar for the Nile flood. The scholar Alexander Marshack proposed that the Ishango bone may have influenced Egyptian mathematics, though that claim is disputed.

  The ancient Egyptians knew a trading partner called Punt, or Ta Netjeru, meaning god's land. It was most likely on the Red Sea coast and the Horn of Africa, and its first mention dates to the 25th century BC. The Puntites traded myrrh, spices, gold, ebony, short-horned cattle, ivory and frankincense. The temple reliefs at Deir el-Bahari record an expedition sent by Queen Hatshepsut of the 18th dynasty, during the reign of the Puntite King Parahu and Queen Ati. According to Christiane Noblecourt, a common language helped make such voyages easier.

  The Early Dynastic Period lasted until about 2686 BC. With the First Dynasty, the capital moved from Thinis to Memphis, and a god-king ruled the unified land. The Giza pyramids and the Great Sphinx rose in the Old Kingdom. Under a vizier, state officials collected taxes and coordinated irrigation projects. A new class of educated scribes and officials received estates from the pharaoh as payment, and pharaohs also granted land to mortuary cults and local temples. Scholars believe five centuries of such grants wore down the pharaoh's economic power. Regional governors called nomarchs began to challenge him. Severe droughts between 2200 and 2150 BC tipped the country into the First Intermediate Period, a 140-year span of famine and strife.

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• 5. Cities of the Indus

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  Mehrgarh, on the Kacchi Plain in present-day Pakistan, is the earliest reliably dated Neolithic site in South Asia, reaching back to 7000 BC. Its aceramic phase lasted until 5500 BC, and its ceramic phase continued up to 3300 BC. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in the subcontinent. The culture around Mehrgarh likely migrated into the Indus Valley and became the Indus Valley Civilisation. The earliest fortified town in the region is Rehman Dheri, dated to 4000 BC. Amri, Kot Diji and Kalibangan followed.

  The Early Harappan Phase ran from 3300 to 2600 BC. At first it was still a village culture that left mostly pottery for archaeologists. The earliest examples of the Indus script date to this phase, along with citadels that point to centralized authority. Trade networks reached distant sources of raw materials, including lapis lazuli for beads. By around 2600 BC, villagers had domesticated crops such as peas, sesame seeds, dates and cotton, and animals including the water buffalo.

  The Mature Harappan Phase, from 2600 to 1900 BC, turned those communities into large urban centers. They included Harappa, Dholavira, Mohenjo-daro, Lothal, Rupar and Rakhigarhi, among more than 1,000 towns and villages. Harappans produced copper, bronze, lead and tin. Their cities held the world's first known urban sanitation systems. Homes drew water from wells, and waste water ran from bathing rooms into covered drains along the major streets. Houses opened only onto inner courtyards and smaller lanes. Dockyards, granaries, warehouses, brick platforms and massive walls completed the picture. The walls most likely guarded against floods and may have discouraged conflict.

  A tiny ivory scale found at Lothal in Gujarat has a smallest division of about 1.704 mm, the smallest ever recorded on a Bronze Age scale. Harappan engineers used decimal divisions. Their chert weights followed a ratio of 5:2:1, with each unit weighing about 28 grams, close to the English Imperial ounce or the Greek uncia. Actual weights still varied across the territory. Centuries later, Kautilya's Arthashastra, from the 4th century BC, used the same weights and measures as Lothal.

  Around 1800 BC, signs of decline began to appear, and by around 1700 BC most of the cities had been abandoned. As of 2016, many scholars believe drought cut trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Ghaggar-Hakra river system was rain-fed and depended on the monsoons. From about 1800 BC the climate grew significantly cooler and drier, linked to a weakening monsoon. Floods became erratic, inundation farming became unsustainable, and residents scattered into smaller communities that could not sustain trade. According to the Aryan Migration Theory, Indo-Aryan peoples moved into the Indus River Valley in this period and began the Vedic age. The civilization did not vanish suddenly, and many of its elements carried on in later cultures of the subcontinent.

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• 6. Yellow River Bronze

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  Millet was being farmed in China by around 7000 BC. Modern scholars do not see Chinese civilization as one linear story. They see the interaction of distinct cultures and ethnic groups, centered on the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Liao regions. The earliest evidence of cultivated rice comes from Chengtoushan near the Yangtze, dated to 6500 BC, and the site may also hold China's first walled city.

  The Peiligang culture of the Yellow River valley flourished from 7000 to 5000 BC, with agriculture, constructed buildings, pottery and burial of the dead. Its most prominent site is Jiahu, where symbols dated to 6600 BC have been proposed as the earliest Chinese proto-writing. Some argue these signs are better seen as part of a lengthy period of sign-use that eventually led to full writing. Archaeologists believe the Peiligang culture was egalitarian, with little political organization.

  The Yangshao culture, from 5000 to 3000 BC, made polished and highly specialized stone tools. It may have practiced an early form of silkworm cultivation. Its main food was millet, with some rice. Scholars debate whether its farming was small-scale slash-and-burn or intensive cultivation in permanent fields. Middle Yangshao settlements such as Jiangzhi contain raised-floor buildings that may have stored surplus grain.

  The Longshan culture followed, from about 3000 to 1900 BC, with Taosi as its most prominent site. Population expanded dramatically during the 3rd millennium BC, and many settlements had rammed earth walls. The earliest bronze artifacts come from a Majiayao culture site dated to 3100-2700 BC. Around 2000 BC the population fell in most areas, and the central area evolved into the Bronze Age Erlitou culture.

  Erlitou is considered the first state-level society of East Asia, and contemporary Chinese civilization begins in its second phase, between 1900 and 1500 BC. The Xia dynasty, dated 2070 to 1600 BC, is the first described in ancient Chinese records such as the Bamboo Annals. Those records were first published more than a millennium later, and no contemporary written evidence corroborates Xia. Whether Erlitou was Xia remains debated.

  Erlitou's four phases lasted roughly 50 years each. In Phase II the site grew to 300 ha with around 11,000 people, and a palace area of 12 ha was marked off by four roads. A bronze foundry south of the palaces was controlled by the elite. The city peaked in Phase III with perhaps 24,000 people and a two-meter-thick rammed-earth wall around the palatial complex. Phase IV saw the population fall to around 20,000. Around 1600 to 1560 BC a culturally Erligang walled city was built at Yanshi, about 6 km northeast, which may signal rivalry for dominance. The Erligang city of Zhengzhou was established 85 km to the east when bronze production at Erlitou ceased. Erlitou shows no evidence of destruction by fire or war. During the Upper Erligang phase, from 1450 to 1300 BC, its palaces were abandoned and it shrank to a village of 30 ha.

  The earliest traditional dynasty with both archaeological and written evidence is the Shang, from 1600 to 1046 BC. Its sites yielded the oldest known body of Chinese writing, the oracle bone script, mostly divinations inscribed on bones. The inscriptions illuminate politics, economy, religion, art and medicine. Some historians argue that Erlitou was an early phase of the Shang. The Sanxingdui culture, contemporary with the Shang, developed a different method of bronze-making.

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• 7. Caral and the Andes

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  Around 9000 BC in Ecuador, the Las Vegas culture left the earliest evidence of agriculture in the Andean region. The bottle gourd may have been the first plant cultivated. The oldest evidence of canal irrigation in South America comes from the Zaña Valley of northern Peru, dated to 4700-2500 BC. The earliest urban settlements of the Andes, and of both American continents, date to 3500 BC at Huaricanga and Sechin Bajo, both in Peru.

  The Caral-Supe civilization, also called Norte Chico, emerged around 3200 BC, when large-scale settlement and communal building across several sites becomes clear. In the early 21st century, the Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady established it as the oldest known civilization in the Americas. It flourished near the Pacific coast in the valleys of three small rivers, the Fortaleza, the Pativilca and the Supe. Caral is the largest and most complex preceramic site, and Aspero is another notable settlement. Haas argues that the density of such large sites in so small an area is globally unique for a nascent civilization. During the third millennium BC, Norte Chico may have been the most densely populated area of the world, with northern China a possible exception.

  Norte Chico completely lacked ceramics and had almost no visual art. It still produced large earthwork platform mounds, sunken circular plazas and an advanced textile industry. The platform mounds and large stone warehouses point to a stratified society with a centralized authority able to distribute resources such as cotton. There is no evidence of warfare or defensive structures. An early theory, the Maritime Foundation of Andean Civilization, held that Norte Chico grew on sea resources instead of a staple cereal. It is still hotly debated. Most researchers now agree that agriculture played a central role, alongside a strong supplemental reliance on maritime proteins.

  Mann called the Norte Chico chiefdoms "almost certainly theocratic, though not brutally so." Construction areas show possible evidence of feasting, which would have included music and likely alcohol. Such rewards suggest an elite able to mobilize and reward the population. At Caral, the two main platform mounds appear to have gone up in one or two intense construction phases. Haas points to large stone warehouses at Upaca, on the Pativilca, as proof that authorities controlled vital resources such as cotton. Only two shore sites are confirmed, Aspero and Bandurria, yet cotton fishing nets and domesticated plants turn up all along the Peruvian coast.

  Discover magazine, citing Shady, describes a rich trade life, with Spondylus shells from the coast of Ecuador, dyes from the Andean highlands and hallucinogenic snuff from the Amazon. Because Norte Chico research remains limited, such claims should be treated circumspectly. Religion is also thinly documented. A gourd dated to 2250 BC bears an image of the Staff God, a leering figure with a hood and fangs, and Winifred Creamer suggests this points to worship of common symbols of gods. Other researchers dispute its significance. Shady calls Caral la ciudad sagrada, the sacred city, where temples were periodically remodeled with major burnt offerings.

  Bundles of strings found at Norte Chico sites have been identified as quipu, a pre-writing recording device. They are thought to encode numbers, and some conjecture they carried other data, possibly literary or musical. Their exact use is widely debated. Around 1800 BC the civilization began to decline, as stronger centers rose along the coast and inside the Andes. Pottery eventually developed in the Amazon Basin and reached the Andean region around 2000 BC. The next major Andean civilization was the Chavín culture, whose religious and political center at Chavín de Huantar, in the Department of Ancash, is believed to have been built around 900 BC.

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• 8. The Olmec Heartland

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  Maize is believed to have been first domesticated in southern Mexico about 7000 BC. The Coxcatlan Caves in the Valley of Tehuacán show agriculture in layers dated between 5000 and 3400 BC. Sipacate in Guatemala yielded maize pollen from 3500 BC. Around 1900 BC the Mokaya domesticated one of the dozen species of cacao, and a Mokaya site holds evidence of cacao beverages from that time. The Mokaya are also thought to have been among the first Mesoamerican cultures with a hierarchical society.

  The Olmec civilization had its roots in early farming cultures of Tabasco, which began around 5100 to 4600 BC. Its emergence is traditionally dated to around 1600 to 1500 BC. Olmec features first appeared at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán and fully coalesced around 1400 BC. Well-watered alluvial soil and the transport network of the Coatzacoalcos River basin supported a densely concentrated population. That in turn fostered an elite and a demand for sophisticated luxury artifacts. Many were made of jade, obsidian and magnetite from distant locations, which suggests an extensive trading network. The Olmec colossal heads are the best-known part of their art.

  San Lorenzo seems to have been largely a ceremonial site, a town without city walls in the midst of a large agricultural population. Its ceremonial center and attendant buildings could have housed 5,500 people, while the whole area, including hinterlands, could have reached 13,000. San Lorenzo likely controlled much of the Coatzacoalcos basin, but areas to the east, where La Venta would rise, and to the north-northwest in the Tuxtla Mountains held independent polities. Around 950 BC many San Lorenzo monuments were destroyed, which may indicate an uprising or, less likely, an invasion. The latest thinking blames environmental change, with important rivers shifting course. San Lorenzo was all but abandoned around 900 BC.

  La Venta became the cultural capital of the Olmec region until its abandonment around 400 BC. Its monumental architecture includes the Great Pyramid of La Venta. A king ruled it, with elites below him and priests who likely held great political sway. Depictions of feathered headdresses, and of people wearing a mirror on the chest or forehead, may mark status. The city would have needed a supporting population of at least 18,000 during its principal occupation. The alluvial soil did not preserve skeletal remains, so differences in burials cannot be observed. Even so, the labor behind the colossal heads shows the elite controlled the lower classes. Excavations also suggest that parts of the site were reserved for elites and others for non-elites.

  Between 400 and 350 BC, the population in the eastern half of the Olmec heartland dropped precipitously. The likely cause was serious environmental change to the riverine environment on which farming, hunting, gathering and transport depended. Tectonic upheaval, subsidence, or rivers silting up from agricultural practices may have triggered it. Tres Zapotes, on the western edge of the heartland, stayed occupied well past 400 BC, but without Olmec hallmarks. This Epi-Olmec culture resembles Izapa, some 550 km to the southeast.

  The Olmecs are sometimes called the mother culture of Mesoamerica, though the degree of their influence has been debated for decades. They introduced ritual bloodletting and the Mesoamerican ballgame, which became hallmarks of later societies such as the Maya and Aztec. Mesoamerican writing would fully develop later, but early Olmec ceramics show representations that may be interpreted as codices.

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