Any thoughts on why humanity started developing civilization.?

Question

Isn't it odd that humanity after hundreds of thousands or years of primitive existence started developing civilizations about the same time around the world with no contact between them?

Answer 1

As far as I recall there is no indication that civilizations sprang up around the world within a few years of each other (but that depends how far back you want to look).

The most plausible theory that I can remember is the "Out of Africa" model which suggests that our particular species evolved somewhere in the continent that we now know as Africa and slowly over time moved further from that center.

As such, the theory goes, that this "new" race created civilizations where it settled. Even with this idea however, it took our species an extremely long time to spread out across the world.

On the other hand, I seem to remember scholars who believe that homo neanderthalensis lived in close proximity to us in some places in Europe and had what we could term civilizations possibly before our species developed.

But to get back to your idea of civilizations springing up around the same time with no contact in between. People said the same thing about the pyramids in Egypt and the similar structures in South America. Bottom line is, it makes sense and more than likely was merely an adaptation to the environment... A lot of people think that the builders of the pyramids in Egypt had to have travelled across the ocean to influence the builders of the pyramid-like structures in South America but let's give people a little bit more credit to create structures based on the technology that they had available at the time. If you wanted to build a tall structure you had to make the base large enough to provide support as such you end up with something that looks very similar to a pyramid.


I hope that this makes sense,

Cheers,

Answer 2

My dictionary says civilization is, "the human condition after the establishment of laws, history and generational adhesion".

The first historical civilization I know of would be the Mesopotamians. The created cuniform writing, wrote laws, compiled a history, and their generations were strongly bonded.

These aspects of civilization spread outward from the place we now call Iraq.

There certainly WAS trade because they wrote of faraway lands that had strange animals, rare spices and unknown languages.

So they traded for strange animals, rare spices, etc. and wrote of the riches of their kingdom.

Answer 3

Perhaps, its simply biological evolution. We overpopulated and then, to stop the overcrowding fights, we organized rules by which we could all live by. There's nothing mysterious about that. It simply says that the frontal lobes of humans evolved at the same time, irregardless of which continent those humans happened to be in.

Answer 4

No, not odd, just an agricultural coincidence. Agriculture had quite a bit of horizontal movement, so there was some peripheral contact between peoples.