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John Alexander The Global Significance of African Civilisation
Abstract
Definitions of civilisation have, for far too long, been restricted to complex urban societies whose attributes included literacy. The result has been to see civilisation in Asio-european terms and exclude African (except for Pharaonic Egyptian) and American societies. This has badly distorted understanding of the development of our species. Archaeological research, particularly in recent years in Africa but also in the Americas, allow this to be corrected for it shows that in many regions in all continents except Australia and North America, after the emergence of efficient agricultures based on locally available plants, indigenous complex urban societies developed without the aid of any kind of writing. They are so similar to those with literacy that either both or neither must be called “civilised”.
In global terms this suggests that in all those continents, human social development has followed a similar pattern; all major subdivisions of the human species evolved agriculture which became efficient enough to support urban communities in which many kinds of skills became established. These civilisations are surprisingly similar among peoples who had no connection with each other in time or space. Does this mean that urban complexity is a condition which best suits our species, and that to it we unconsciously aim and unconsciously arrive at similar societies? If so then long abandoned teleological explanations should be reconsidered.
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Ironically enough, both Africa and the Americas have each provided more than one society which DO meet such strict definitions and criteria of "civilization".
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