“Know yourself,” was written in one ancient temple. For many, this is the meaning of life. And a very worthy one! When a person actively gets to know himself, sometimes he is overcome by the feeling that he is a kaleidoscope of other people’s fragments: mom’s eyes, dad’s nose, grandfather’s stubbornness and grandmother’s faith in miracles.
Just as genotype determines phenotype, so our values and faith grow out of culture, which did not arise in one moment. You are the fruit of many thousands of years of human history, growing on the richest cultural layer.
Civilizations pass away, but knowledge remains. It’s time to explore your rich heritage and be amazed at the remote corners of the planet and time it can take you to. Let’s use cognitive science and critical thinking to go hunting for fragments of ancient civilizations.
What is civilization?
Civilizations, like people, are formed within the historical process. This knowledge that ancient civilizations left us is the basis of our way of life, thinking and acting.
Apparently we only have half the truth about the past because history is told by the victors. When one people conquers another, it is not because they are culturally superior. It is simply because they have a better or larger army. Might is right.
The term “civilization” is used to describe human societies that have developed complex social organization and created urban centers with administrative structures and divisions of labor. In ancient times, some of these societies had a state organization: power was concentrated in the hands of a group that had privileges and a life distinct from the rest of society.
We define civilization as a cultural stage of the most advanced societies according to their level in the field of beliefs, arts, etc. This concept is used to denote a complex society, different from the tribal societies of ancient times.
This term is also used as a synonym for progress, for example:
- “Civilization has not yet reached these lands.”
- “We cannot allow hundreds of people to live outside of civilization.”
- “When I was a teenager, my dream was to leave civilization and go into the woods.”
The history of mankind developed gradually:
- 3 million years ago, people already knew how to make stone tools. They were found in Africa, in the territory of modern Kenya, in the Lomekwi 3 tract.
- Science does not yet know who the creators of the Lomekwian tools were, but scientists agree on one thing: several centers of anthropogenesis developed in Africa a couple of million years ago . To put it simply, initially there were several species of people that differed from each other both externally and genetically.
- Only one has survived to this day – Homo S. It arose about 300 thousand years ago in Africa and later spread throughout the planet.
- The oldest sculpture is 40,000 years old (the “Stadel Lion”) [ Google Arts & Culture, 2024 ]. About the same age, although probably a little less, is the oldest carved human figure, the “Venus of Hohle Fels”. The way the ancient carver depicted women’s breasts and genitals makes some think of matriarchy, and others – rethink the origins of pornography. The author can no longer correct, so freedom of opinion is allowed here.
- After the melting of the glacier and global climate change, rivers began to roar across the Earth. “Homo sapiens” invented bow hunting, fishing tools, and began domesticating animals and plants. This happened about 13-8 thousand years ago (in different regions of the world, it varies). The oldest bows were discovered in Denmark. They are 9 thousand years old.
- The oldest stone structures are 12 thousand years old. This is Gobekli Tepe in modern Turkey.
- The oldest settlement is 9,000 years old. This is Çatalhöyük in Turkey. Conclusion: settlements arose long before civilizations, writing, and cities. The rooms in Çatalhöyük were bright and spacious, with minimal furniture. You got into such a house not through the door, but through the roof with a ladder [ Google Arts & Culture, 2024 ].
- The first civilization to emerge was Mesopotamia, about 6,000 years ago in the Middle East between the rivers. It was this civilization that invented writing, from which traditional history with written sources is counted.
- Then came the civilization of Ancient China. Chinese scientists claim that this happened about 5 thousand years ago, but they cannot provide material evidence. For now. So you can take their word for it.
The discovery of agriculture and the domestication of animals shaped the first civilizations and the modern world, allowing man to learn the concepts of hydraulic engineering and the measurement of time. With the domestication of animals and agriculture came the spread of sedentary life and with it advances in organization, management, architecture, etc.
Thinking has changed radically, and a modern type of brain has emerged. You can learn more about this in our online program “Cognitive Science: Thinking Development” .
The economic organization of the first cities had similar characteristics in their historical development, their economy was based on agriculture, fishing and livestock farming.
Cities were ruled by priests, later by warlords and kings or monarchs, and everything revolved around their gods. The rulers of these early cities were closely tied to their religion and were the link between the earthly and divine forces that justified their rule.
The great civilizations of the ancient world had very similar development processes, almost all of them were located near rivers, lakes or lagoons, which allowed them to obtain higher yields and water for their livestock and inhabitants.
For example:
- The Mesopotamian civilization was formed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
- The Indian civilization settled on the Ganges and Indus rivers.
- Ancient Egypt is unthinkable without the Nile.
- Ancient China occupied the area between the Yellow River and the Yangtze River.
- Ancient Crete, Phoenicia and Greece were located on water-rich islands and coasts of the Mediterranean Sea.
- Mesoamerican civilizations developed on the margins of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, or lakes such as Texcoco.
Let’s start our review of ancient civilizations from the very beginning!
The Contribution of Mesopotamia
When we talk about Mesopotamia, we mean:
- Sumerians;
- Akkadians;
- Assyrians;
Each of these peoples created what historians today call a “civilization” or “empire.”
Sumerians
The Sumerians left us a great legacy, namely:
- wheel;
- bricks;
- writing;
- dams and other types of structures;
The oldest surviving wheel is kept in what is now Slovenia. It has been proven to be 5,150 years old.
The Sumerians planned their cities and had a drainage system similar to today’s. They also contributed to religion, astrology, law, education, and agricultural production.
The Sumerians created the first written language in history (called cuneiform) to record the governance of their cities. Another notable feature of their culture was the construction of ziggurats – temples in the form of stepped pyramids. Moreover, the myth of the universal flood comes from their culture, it is present in the epic story “The Epic of Gilgamesh”.
And when you come home after a hard day at work and open a bottle of beer, don’t forget to thank the Sumerians: they invented it. The clay cuneiform tablet that contains the world’s oldest reference to beer is 5,000 years old. Thanks to it, we know for sure that the Sumerians gave beer to workers as part of their daily ration.
Akkadians
If the Sumerians did not have a single state, but rather disparate city-states, then the Akkadian people under Sargon I were able to unite the region within one empire. They did not stop there and began to consistently conquer neighboring territories.
The Akkadians are a Semitic people, like modern Jews.
The Akkadians not only turned military craft into an art, but also left a legacy to their descendants:
- Impressive reliefs.
For over a century, the Akkadians managed to spread their language and culture, but later the Sumerian city-states regained their independence.
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Assyrians
The Assyrians are another people of Semitic origin who inhabited Mesopotamia since ancient times. From the middle of the third millennium BC, several Assyrian city-states were united under a centralized authority. Later, the Assyrians built an entire empire, conquering several regions of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria, and the Levant [ Concepto, 2024 ].
The Assyrians were known for their military prowess and advanced military tactics. They were also characterized by a highly developed written culture and architectural art with very detailed reliefs of battle and religious scenes. The Assyrians reached their highest level in the production of tiles: multi-colored glazed bricks.
Unlike the Sumerians, the Assyrians have survived to this day and preserved their religion. If you don’t believe me, you can check it out for yourself: in Moscow there is a temple of the Assyrian Church of the East, which, being one of the branches of Christianity, is many centuries older than Orthodoxy. It arose in the 1st century AD, i.e. about a millennium before the Baptism of Rus. In the temple you can not only communicate with the Assyrians, but also learn their language, which belongs to the Aramaic group of languages.
Babylonians
Also Semites. They built very strong roads.
They left us one of the most ancient legal monuments in the world – the “Laws of Hammurabi”.
They were among the first on the planet to invent usury, loans, and to come up with the cynical idea that the life of any person has a price.
It was the Babylonians who stood at the origins of what we today perceive as guilt and innocence.
When we talk about the influence of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians, it is sometimes very difficult to establish exactly who invented what and when, because the peoples lived nearby, closely interacted with each other and influenced each other.
Therefore, to avoid conflicts, let us diplomatically sum up and recall that division and multiplication, the sexagesimal numeral system, commercial contracts, checks, bills of exchange and promissory notes, vaults, ramps, zodiac signs and, consequently, horoscopes were born on the territory of ancient Mesopotamia. With each year that archaeologists extract a new artifact from the earth, this list becomes longer.
It was the first civilization on the planet that gave us domestic cats. Although it is generally accepted that cats were domesticated in Ancient Egypt, because they were deified there, the goddess Bast with a cat’s head was worshiped, and entire cat cemeteries were built, scientists have proven that the center of cat breeding was not in Africa, but further east – in the Middle East.
About 10 thousand years ago, the first kittens were born there, who were not shy of people, helped them guard grain warehouses from rodents and while away rainy evenings. Scientists assume that the Middle Eastern cats were transported by sea to Cyprus, where archaeologists found the oldest cat bones in a cave near Limassol. They are about 9 thousand years old, but such mammals did not live in Cyprus itself at that time, which made historians assume that the Cyprus cat is an invasive species.
However, all the i’s and t’s in the history of cat domestication have not yet been dotted. If this topic is close to you and you would like to fact-check, understand the nature of the misconceptions of your interlocutors and help others not to fall under the hypnosis of the media, we recommend visiting our online program “Critical Thinking” .
Contribution of Ancient Egypt
The Egyptian civilization is one of the most ancient; due to its geographical location, it was closely connected with Mediterranean cultures and for a long period of time was not subject to invasions and destruction.
In Egypt, the Alexandria Library was built, where all the knowledge of antiquity was collected. This library was burned by Christian fanatics.
In Egypt, hieroglyphic and demotic writing were developed, new forms of numbering and land measurement formulas were created, large reservoirs and canals were built, and a 365-day calendar was created. In architecture, the Egyptians preferred interior lighting without windows, columns, and large pyramids. They also created very advanced methods of embalming and mummification.
Contribution of Ancient China
Chinese culture is one of the richest in the world and has left us a legacy of cotton fabrics, silk, paper, ink and porcelain.
The Chinese invented gunpowder, the compass and the seismograph, excelled in landscape painting and acupuncture, and built the Great Wall of China.
It was the Chinese who were at the origins of what we today mean by a “park” – a landscape distinct from a forest, built in accordance with human ideas about beauty. Ancient Chinese gardening art was a symbiosis of fruit growing and painting, calligraphy and music, science and religion, chemistry and physics.
Ancient Chinese gardens gave us:
- peonies;
- lotuses;
- wisteria;
- camellias;
- lemongrass;
- orchids;
- chrysanthemums;
- osmanthus;
- densely double climbing roses;
- azaleas;
- kiwi-actinidia;
- rhododendrons;
- regal lilies (regale) with a strong scent.
The botanical heritage of Ancient China has not preserved the names of the original gardeners, but even in the 21st century it presents a magnificence of colors, scents and forms.
Contribution of Ancient India
For many people, India, both ancient and modern, represents spirituality. It has given us yoga, meditation , Ayurveda, curry…
Monumental architecture, chess, the Kama Sutra, the concept of non-violent resistance to evil, which was so actively preached by Mahatma Gandhi – all this is Indian heritage.
Jewish civilization
That’s right. It’s not listed in most history textbooks, but by the 21st century, scholars have accumulated enough arguments to put the Jews on the same level as the creators of the civilizations of Ancient China and Ancient India [ M. Nosovsky, 2024 ]. All three peoples are representatives of a super-ethnos that united people of different nationalities and faiths with common values.
Jews have been able to carry their culture through the millennia: donuts and klezmer, Kabbalah and hummus, challah and tzimmes. The list goes on and on.
Contribution of Ancient Persia
The Persians descended from the Aryan race that conquered Mesopotamia. From here came the prophet Rama, who brought the Vedic culture to India.
The Persians developed the world’s first monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism, which speaks of the true God, Ahura Mazda, who fights against evil, represented by Ahriman.
Mithras was another Aryan deity, his main rite was a feast, very similar to the Christian Eucharist, and historians suspect that the story of Jesus is taken from the god Mithras because of the similarities they have, as both were born of a virgin, raised a galaxy of faithful disciples and were crucified at the end of their lives.
The Persian civilization left behind military knowledge, which, thanks to its armies and strategists, it spread throughout Europe.
Art was another great contribution of the ancient Persians, as they created beautiful sculptures, paintings, and textiles. Persian carpets are famous to this day.
When the Persians fell to Muslim invaders, they appropriated much of their culture. For example, the book One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Persian stories translated into Arabic by Muslims.
Contribution of Ancient Greece
Greek culture laid the foundations for the entire social structure as we know it in the Western world. The Greeks got most of their knowledge from the Sumerians.
The great philosophers of Greece have greatly influenced the way we live and think. They met over a cup of wine to discuss the meaning of life, and from their answers emerged mathematical, psychological, philosophical, theological, ethical and other knowledge.
Ancient Greece is the birthplace of such brilliant minds as Socrates , Plato , Aristotle , Pythagoras and Thales of Miletus.
Greek culture spread throughout the world first through Alexander the Great and then through the Roman Empire, which conquered Greece and absorbed its splendor.
The Greeks created a democracy and economy based on slavery, trade and war. They were distinguished by their philosophical, artistic, architectural, literary, military and scientific development.
The ancient Greeks made enormous contributions to government, sculpture, painting, poetry, theater, and history. They perfected columns, arches, and vaults, with which they built great temples, buildings, and statues. History includes the geometric, algebraic, and arithmetical discoveries of Pythagoras, the physical discoveries of Archimedes, and the medical achievements of Hippocrates.
Contribution of Ancient Rome
The Roman Empire conquered Greece and absorbed its culture, bringing it to all the conquered peoples. The Roman Empire was divided into the Eastern Empire, forming the Byzantine Empire with its capital Constantinople, and Western Rome, which adopted Catholic Christianity and formed the basis of the power of the Catholic Church.
The Romans made Latin the official language, and through mixing with local languages, the Romance languages such as Spanish, French and Portuguese emerged. Roman law was created, establishing the separation of powers, which is the precursor to our current legal system.
Mesoamerican civilizations
All of the above cultures and civilizations were Eurasian. One way or another, they contacted, communicated, traded and fought with each other. The study of their heritage, a brief excursion into the history of antiquity and the peoples of the Near East were obligatory in the process of education of “well-mannered young people” from the wealthy classes who could afford this education.
In the 20th century, as both America and Asia began to influence European life, the understanding of the geography of ancient civilizations expanded. As globalization began and people around the world became interested in American culture, many began to discover the great pre-Columbian civilizations that were previously known only as the ones who gave us potatoes and corn.
Therefore, a brief essay on the influence of the great civilizations of the past on the modern world would be incomplete without a discussion of Mesoamerican achievements.
Olmecs
At the origin of these achievements was the Olmec culture, which lasted from 1200 BCE to about 400 BCE. It is often considered the “mother” of other Mesoamerican cultures, as it was the first complex society in the Americas to have a major influence in the region.
The Olmecs are traditionally credited with initiating the Mesoamerican artistic and architectural style, many remains of which still survive today from Jalisco to Costa Rica. Its motifs were later adopted and reworked by later cultures in the region.
The Olmecs were skilled in processing jade and obsidian, from which they made figurines and other artifacts that they used themselves or traded.
Warriors played a prominent role in their society, and rulers were identified with the gods and reigned in dynasties.
Evidence suggests that the Olmec culture was deeply religious. Olmec art contains depictions of a wide range of supernatural beings, allowing us to know that it was a polytheistic society with deities associated with agriculture, the stars, volcanoes, and other aspects of the natural world and the cosmos.
The Olmecs also worshiped animals they considered sacred, such as the jaguar, which also gave birth to the so-called “jaguar man,” a creature half feline and half human. They also worshiped toads, alligators, eagles, snakes, sharks, and a group of fantastic creatures represented by the head of one animal and the body of another.
The Olmecs were great lovers of self-decoration: feathers, septum piercings, nose rings, earrings and chest ornaments were common among men, especially warriors and rulers.
It was the Olmecs:
- We discovered the rubber tree that gave us rubber by collecting the milky juice of the hevea tree.
- They gave us football, basketball, baseball and other team games, where the semantic center is a rubberized ball, and the action itself takes place on a specially fenced area.
- They discovered cocoa and learned how to make chocolate.
- They created impressive funerary sculptures in the form of heads up to 3 meters high, carved into stone and known as “colossal heads”.
The Olmecs paid special attention to sacrifices and bloodletting, which they raised to the level of art. Perhaps it was this attitude to human life that gave rise to the idea of zero, so valued by modern programmers. Without a stick.
Aztecs
The capital of the Aztec Empire was the great city of Tenochtitlan, and it is said that this city amazed the Spaniards with its beauty and organization.
The Aztecs distinguished themselves in the construction and planning of their cities, in water management, and built large canals. They had their own hieroglyphic writing, a system of numeration, and a calendar. They had developed metallurgy, especially gold and copper processing. They sewed cotton dresses and made polychrome ceramics.
Mayan
This people invented a solar calendar that regulated agricultural activities. They were guided by the phases of the moon and the movement of the Pleiades. It was the most accurate until the 15th century.
In mathematics, the Mayans developed a vigesimal system. They built majestic pyramids, temples, columns and vaults.
Although the Mayans had no modern scientific intentions, they were able to measure the 584-day cycle of Venus with an error of only two hours.
Unlike the Olmecs and Aztecs, the Maya have successfully survived to this day. They speak 25 languages of the Maya-Kiche family and in recent decades have experienced a real Renaissance of their ancient culture, rethinking the legacy of their ancestors in modern realities.
Etruscan civilization
During the Soviet era, the Etruscans were studied at the beginning of lessons on the history of Ancient Rome. Today, it is generally accepted that this is roughly the same as comparing the ancient Greeks with the ancient Romans – incorrect.
Many elements that are today considered characteristic of Roman civilization have their origins in Etruscan culture, for example:
- gladiator fights;
- symbols of power;
- urban models.
The Etruscan civilization arose in what is now Tuscany in the 2nd millennium BC. Later, the people spread across central and northern Italy, merging with migration flows from Asia Minor and mixing with pre-Latin indigenous populations.
The Etruscans entered global history thanks to their tombs, which were intended for eternal life. That is why everything that the deceased had during life and that could not be enough for his eternal life was placed in the structures, built from more noble and durable materials than those used in houses: from furniture to household items, including clothing and jewelry.
However, it would be wrong to say that the Etruscans worshiped death. We know from documents that in life they valued luxury, joy, wine, beauty and women.
It was the Etruscans who invented the arch and its derivatives – the vault, the dome and the portico. These elements were used not only in tombs, but also in city walls, civil buildings and aqueducts.
The Romans borrowed from the Etruscan elite :
- Insignia of supreme power (golden crown in the form of a wreath of oak leaves, embroidered purple cape, ivory scepter topped with an eagle).
- Gladiatorial combat as an improved version of ritual sacrifices of prisoners of war.
- The practice of haruspices. Such a person tried to predict the future by divination from the flight and entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the liver.
However, nothing distinguished Etruscan society from Roman society as much as their attitude towards women. Roman matrons were dependent on their husbands and fathers, and were forced to share their spouses with hetaera, concubines and other slaves.
In Etruscan culture, on the contrary, women actively participated in public life, enjoyed freedom and high social status. They accompanied their husbands to parties and banquets, wore luxurious dresses and enjoyed local wines.
Etruscan women could own slaves, real estate, and other types of property. Their tombs were as rich as those of men, and their names and surnames were preserved in funerary inscriptions.
Sexual freedom was also included in this context, since in some respects sexuality is nothing more than a form of social control, emphasizes the Spanish historian Javier Sanz [ J. Sanz, 2023 ].
According to the Greek historian Theopompus, Etruscan women:
- They took great care of their bodies.
- They often did gymnastics with men.
- They were not ashamed to appear completely naked in public.
- They were not ashamed to have a beautiful appearance and drink a lot.
- All children who were born were raised equally, without attaching any particular importance to who their father was.
Many millennia will pass before the shoots of what seemed to the Romans to be debauchery and licentiousness again appear in the Italian and neighboring lands.
People tend to judge others by themselves and to equate everyone with the same brush – this is how the human brain works , it saves resources and prefers already laid neural paths. However, life is much richer, more interesting and broader than this approach. History preserves evidence of this in the legacy of great civilizations, and we have much to learn from them.