The Story of Civilization

For 40 years, between 1935-1975, historians Will and Ariel Durant compiled an 11-volume series attempting to document the collective history of civilization. In Volume 1: Our Oriental Heritage, they showed that these last 2000 years of western civilization is just the tip of an iceberg, which is built upon a massive foundation of civilization that developed over tens of thousands of years in Egypt, Sumeria, Babylonia, India, Iraq, and the Far East.

I love Will and Ariel’s work and wanted to share some interesting takeaways from Volume 1: Our Oriental Heritage.

1. The only difference between us and chimps is our culture. Culture is developed over 1000’s of generations, but can be destroyed in just one. We are always just one generation away from losing everything.
2. Religion has been present since the beginning of time. And has evolved up to the time of Christ. Christianity wasn’t a new invention, just a natural evolution with many links to Egypt and Sumeria.
3. Before Plato we already had established the 8 bases of civilization which are:
   1. Labor
   2. Government
   3. Morality
   4. Religion
   5. Science
   6. Philosophy
   7. Letters
   8. Art
4. Cruelty has declined slowly through time.
5. Japanese samurais were bad mother fuckers.
6. The individual didn’t appear as a unit until Greece. Previous units were family, tribe, community and state.
7. Ancient Egyptian women were the most powerful in history up until about 70 years ago.
8. Agriculture seeded civilization.
9. Hammurabi’s Code (eye for an eye) is the first record of morality.
10. Religion slowly shifted from animist, to polytheist, to monotheist.
11. Ancient Chinese were amazing philosophers.
12. Writing evolved because of commerce.
13. Singing and dancing have been a part of every culture.
14. Northern peoples have always been better at commerce and war. Southern peoples at art and philosophy.
15. Societies always go corrupt internally before an enemy from without comes and conquers them.
16. The greatest inventions in order: Speech, Fire, Conquest of Animals, Agriculture, Social Organization, Morality, Tools, Science, Education, Writing.
17. People need to be united by something. Fast expansion leads to people with nothing in common under the same rule. It never lasts. Religion was used as a means of uniting conquered people, but it didn’t always work.
18. The poor needed religion more to justify their suffering.
19. Outrageous taxes are nothing new.
20. Gunpowder came from China.
21. Buddhists don’t do anything because India is so damn hot.
22. Environmental factors have huge impacts on shaping religion, government, everything.
23. The young have always been arrogant and thought they didn’t need the wisdom of the old. There has always been tension between the liberal youth and conservative old. Nothing new.