Which culture was the first great civilization?

Question

Please- no wikipedia copies! I just want your opinions.

Answer 1

This question really doesn't HAVE an "opinion".
It's a FACT.
The world's FIRST civilization was SUMER 3500–2334 BCE

Okay, first for the TEXT BOOK definition of what a civilization IS;

The evolution of most civilizations has been summarized as follows:

All civilizations start small, establishing their genesis with the creation of state systems for maintaining the elite.

Successful civilizations then flourish and grow, becoming larger and larger in an accelerating fashion.

They then reach a limiting maximum extent, perhaps managing to hold a degree of stability for a length of time.

Competition between states in a civilization may result in one achieving predominance over the others.

Dominance may be indirect, or may formalize into the structure of single multi-ethnic empires.

Over the long term civilizations either collapse or get replaced by a larger, more dynamic civilization.



The earliest known civilizations rose up in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq & Iran.

The Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer officially is believed to have begun around 4000-3500 BCE, and ended at 2334 BCE with the rise of Akkad.

The oldest granary yet found dates back to 9500 BCE and is located in the Jordan Valley.
The earliest known settlement in Jericho (9th millennium BCE) was a PPNA culture that eventually gave way to more developed settlements later, which included in one early settlement (8th millennium BCE) mud-brick houses surrounded by a stone wall, having a stone tower built into the wall.
By the 6th millennium BCE we find what appears to be an ancient shrine and cult, which would likely indicate intercommunal religious practices in this era.

Around 1500 to 1200 BCE Jericho and other cities of Canaan had become vassals of the Egyptian empire.

Several miles southwest of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of early temple-cities, in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, with the earliest of these settlements carbon dating to around 5000 BCE.

Sumerian cuneiform script dates to no later than about 3500 BCE. Sumer, which was Mesopotamia's first civilization in what is now Iraq, is recognized as the world's earliest civilization.

Just the facts Ma'am!

Answer 2

Traditionally, there are three contenders: Egypt, Sumeria, Indus Valley. All three were White civilizations.

The Egyptians pharoahs were all White until the 25th Dynasty, which was the first Black dynasty (and the last before Egypt was conquered by Assyria and then again by Persia).

The Indus Valley civilization was founded by migratory Aryans.

The Sumerians were light-skinned, and they were not Semitic, but I don't know whether they were Aryan or the descendants of a very ancient pre-Aryan migration.

HOWEVER, I'll bet that there were older pre-Aryan caucasoid civilizations in Europe prior to 6000 BC. There were pottery makers in East Europe (e.g., Dolni Vestonice, Moravia) as long ago as 28,000 BC. There are a number of very ancient (before 6000 BC) pyramids in Europe, too, which today are covered by soil and overgrowth.

At least 150 large temples dating back to ~5000 BC have been discovered under fields, hills and cities in Germany, Austria, Bosnia and Slovakia. They're 2000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids.

If I had to bet, I'd say that Cro-Magnon learned fairly early how to build sailboats, and did.

Answer 3

That depends on what you define as a "great civilization." What makes a civilization a "great" one? Sustainability? Stability? Sanitation? Citizen benefits?

If I were to pin the first great civilization, I would probably put it as Greece. I would consider it to be such because it is in Greece that we find the first true philosophers that separated life from simply being a work of the gods. Instead we find people who were cynical and skeptical toward the gods like Euripides and many others. They began explaining the world instead through science and observation, and attributing it more to "natural law" than to a higher power. Much of this information went on to Rome, but fell quite out of disfavor after its fall until the Renaissance, where the idea of science as a thing separate from faith (the Middle Ages were NOT stagnant with science or technology, in spite of popular belief; it was just religiously oriented) began to re-emerge, and was difficult to reconcile WITH faith.

Answer 4

If by great you mean the first actual recorded histories of a culture, the you would have to go with the Sumerians. If by great you mean the ability to conquer other lands, you would have to go with the Egyptians. Safe answer is the Sumerians, because their civilization actually began recorded history as we know it today, and nothing is greater than that from an academic standpoint.

Answer 5

Mesopotamian of course!! (Assyrian :) ) They were older than the Egyptian civilization and predated the pyramid by building the ziggurat. They also invented the wheel, lens, glass, first written language, irrigation system (toilets), lock & keys, number 0, chariot, helmet, and many important innovations that have shaped and influenced society today. The world would be a different place if it wasn't for their innovations.

Answer 6

Its up to so much speculation and researchers......I believe the greatest civilization to start off the others was the Ancient Egyptians or whomever created the orginal pyramids that scatter across different parts of the World in a variety of different forms....The mounds of the Indians in the Americas and the ruins of pyramid structures in different parts of the World like Peru,Mexico,South America in General etc. tell me that once we were all connected somehow ,someway!!

Answer 7

Sumer was the oldest. Egypt and the Indus valley lagged them by enough for archaeologists to believe that most of the innovations of civilization flowed from Sumer to the other early civilizations. The Egyptian pyramids, for instance, started as step pyramids in the ziggurat style.

Answer 8

Mesopotamia. They were extremely advanced given their time.

You could also argue the Egyptians because of the long term success of their civilization....and the thousands of advances that they made.

Or...the Greeks because of their advances in warfare, the arts and humanities (philosophy, politics, etc) and mathematics and science.

Or...the Romans, as they took so much from so many other civilizations that they conquered, then passed the knowledge all across their empire.

Answer 9

there were a lot of civilizations before them, but the ancient Greeks were really the first ones to develop "culture". lots of civilizations had mythologies and stories and songs and traditions, of course, but the Greeks invented literature, history, science, theatre and drama, philosophy, democracy, the hippocratic oath for doctors, taxonomy, geometry, and many other truly astounding things. and they wrote it all down so that their influence would ring into perpetuity. even today, almost 3000 years later, almost everybody knows the names of at least of few of their greatest citizens; from Euclid to Achilles to Socrates to Hercules. That's pretty hard to beat in my opinion.

Answer 10

Egypt. Reigned as a civilization for 3000 years before the birth of Christ