DÜNYA MEDENİYETLERİNE GİRİŞ

In Oriental historiography one of the earliest
researchers of civilization were:
• Fukuzawa Yukichi (1835-1901) in Japan,
who defined it as follows: “civilization
comforts man physically and elevates him
spiritually…Civilization advances the
well-being and dignity of man, since man
acquires these benefits through knowledge
and virtue.” In his opinion, “morals had
remained almost unchanged throughout
history, but intellect had shown marked
growth and progress.”

An English historian Arnold Toynbee
(1889-1975) published his greatest work in
the twelve-volume A Study of History (1934-
1961). He compared the history of twentysix
different civilizations, which everyone
follows a similar pattern of evolution
through a cyclical pattern of growth,
maturity, and decay. He believed that societies
thrive best in response to challenges and that
a society’s most important task is to create
a religion. He never defined civilization
clearly. Though he saw the Western
Civilization to be in its decay phase, he
saw hope for the future formation of one
spiritually oriented world community.

Rushton Coulbourne in his book The
Origin of Civilized Societies (1959) debates
a very difficult question concerning origins
of civilized societies and addresses two
questions;
• Is there a distinction between civilized
and primitive societies?
• Were civilized societies of single or
multiple origin?

Immanuel Wallerstein
understood this very well and offered the world-system concept as
a new approach in analyzing human development. In The Modern
World-System (1974), he offered a tool on how to recognize the
most useful interpretation of what happened historically. In his
interpretation, “units of analysis” are “world-systems,” which
mean something other than the modern nation-state, something
larger than the nation-state, and something that was defined
by the boundaries of an effective, ongoing division of labor

A sign of this role is indicated in William McGaughey’s book on
electronic civilization (2001), which shows how civilization has moved from print to electronic culture, and
its ideals have changed from the classic “truth, beauty, and good” to an elusive element called rhythm
(the energy and control of the individual and of human society); and how self-consciousness (concentrating
on ourselves), enemy of rhythm, underlies the complexity of modern life

Civilization had been growing gradually along with the cultural and industrial development of Man as homo sapiens for the last 200,000 years. About 40,000-50,000 years ago, humans underwent a very important genetic mutation, when the DRD4 gene was developed that encodes the dopamine neurotransmitter. It is this neurotransmitter which is responsible for human personality traits (Ding et al). In such a way, humans become more intellectually alert, and as a result develop increasing capacities for leadership and socializing. Fortunately, the climate changes that occurred around 40,000-30,000 BCE helped humans demonstrate their more developed societies, allowing them to migrate across continents and form the beginnings of infrastructure."

About 10,000 BCE people became farmers, animal breeders, and pottery makers. When the Ice Age ended in 9,000 BCE, the warmer climate was friendlier for humans and their civilizing processes. In years between 8,000–6,000 BCE, sheep, pigs, cattle and other livestock were domesticated and more people were settling in the uphrates and Tigris rivers valley, called Mesopotamia (contemporary Iraq). About 7,500 BCE, villages were growing in nearby Anatolia (contemporary Turkey).

Ever since religion was transformed from beliefs
in magic to beliefs in poly-gods and then to a monogod,
the cultural civilization has applied religion
as the main tool of cultural control. Religious
and military forces were the foundations of the
power apparatus that maintained the society as a
governed entity. These forces civilized the society
and moved it into higher levels of organization.
Among cultural civilizations one can recognize
about 16 cases, such as:

• the Egyptian Civilization 3100 BCE,
• the Minoan 2700 BCE,
• the Sinic Civilization 2000 BCE,
• the Mycenae Civilization 1500 BCE,
• the Canaanite Civilization 1100 BCE,
• the Hellenic Civilization 750 BCE,
• the Hindu Civilization 600 BCE,
• the Hellenistic Civilization 323 BCE
• the Roman Civilization 31 BCE,
• the Eastern Civilization 350 CE,
• the Ethiopian Civilization 400 CE,
• the Buddhist Civilization 600 CE,

• the Islamic Civilization 632 CE.
• the Sub-Saharan Civilization 800 CE,
• the Western Civilization 800 CE,
• the Maghrebian Civilization 1000 CE.

An empire is a state of large size exercising political dominion over others, with or without latter’s consent. Thus, the Ottoman Empire was ruling over other nations during almost 5 centuries, from 1453 till 1920.

Perhaps it is time to combine early and
contemporary definitions of civilizations
(Targowski, 2009b) by emphasizing these following
important attributes:
1) Large society
a. Specializing in labor
b. Self-differentiating
c. Sharing the same knowledge system
2) Space and Time
a. Autonomous fuzzy reification
b. Distinguished and extended area or
period
c. Reification not a part of a larger entity
3) Cultural system, values and symbol driven
a. Communication driven (e.g.: literate
and electronic media)
b. Religion, wealth, and power driven
4) Infrastructural system, technology-driven
by, first, at least one of the following:
a. Urban infrastructure
b. Agricultural Infrastructure
c. Other infrastructures (Industrial,
Information and so forth)
5) Cycle-driven
a. Rising, growing, declining, and falling
over time

Authour of “Historical capitalism” is Immanuel Wallerstein.

Right answer is “A”.

Authour of “Global Civilization” is Andrew Targowski. Right answer is “C”.

Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) is in Turkey. Right answer is “B”.

The Hellenic Civilization dates 750 BCE.  Right answer is "D".

The Roman Civilization dates 31 BCE. Right answer is “E”

Religion is one of the element of culture. İt is not one of the element of human entity. Right answer is “E”.

Nation is an entity which has a common language, culture, memory of historic events and “natinal consciousness”. Right answer is “B".

Utopia  is a society of calm and stagnation or perhaps even the beginning of civilization death. Right answer is “A”.