The word "civilized" is often use to describe an evening of fine dining, going to the symphony, or sophisticated banter over refreshments including good cheeses and wines with a lovely bouquet. This, of course, is only one meaning.

The term also describes cultures that have certain aspects in common. Depending on who is giving the definition, it varies slightly, but it is agreed that civilizations are large scale societies that have permanent settlements, heavily rely on agriculture, have writing, and have built large monuments. There are numerous shared qualities that result in a culture having the aforementioned properties. Division of labor, class division, hierarchical institutionalized religion,and long distance trade are a few.

Societies all fall somewhere on the spectrum from completely civilized, to totally uncivilized. People in civilized cultures tend to associate civilization with advancement and enlightenment which they think of as something that cultures evolve and aspire to, and something that is due to the intelligence of the community. However, people seem to become notably less vocal about this if it requires them to also say that the Aborigines of Australia, or the San of the Kalahari desert are slow and backward people, as both cultures lack all aspects of civilization.

So why, exactly, do some cultures become civilized while other cultures, even though they do experience many cultural changes, do not? Why is it that much of sub-Saharan Africa, most of the Americas and all of Australia were uncivilized until colonialism, where as most of Europe and Asia were civilized for centuries long before colonialism?

Jared Diamond, in an attempt to answer these questions, establishes three categories for looking at why and how civilizations developed where they did. The first is the indigenous animal population. Only a tiny fraction of animals are capable of being domesticated. It is certainly not just a matter of trying it. Take, for example, Rome. There are many instances of the Roman military attempting to domesticate African elephants. It always resulted in the animals creating mayhem, while the few elephants that were effectively domesticated never bore offspring that were any easier to domesticate than an elephant born to feral parents.

Diamond asserts that animals have to be social, have a social hierarchy, neither be too territorial nor too skittish, and be willing to breed in captivity while not be too choosy about a mate. As luck would have it, there was a paucity of such animals in the New World, Africa, and in Australia. But a relative plethora in Europe and Asia. The precursors to the cow, pig, sheep, horses, and goats we know today were all available in Europe.

Diamond’s second category is plants. Similarly to animals, only a small portion of plants can be domesticated. Again as luck would have, the eurasian continent has more domesticatable plants. The most notable, and certainly the most important for civilizations, are grasses like wheat and spelt. In parts of Eurasia, wheat grows abundantly all on its own. In a single area many wheat plants grew in close proximity to each other year after year.

Diamond speculates that for people watching this, it would not be too astonishing of a leap to try to sow the seeds themselves in other areas. The grains that grew in Eurasia were easy to plant (basically just toss the seeds), easy to reap (with a sickle a person could cut large swaths quickly), and easy to digest. Contrast that with Australia and sub-Saharan Africa, neither of which had such grains available.

In the Americas, the plant that fits the description the best is corn. However, corn has key differences. The history of corn is not as clear as wheat and other grasses. There is no definitive proof of what plant corn has evolved from, but it is known that corn itself does not grow feral. This means there had to be generation after generation selectively breeding some wild grass until it became what we can recognize as corn. The corn plant is difficult to sow, requiring each seed to be planted individually. It is even more difficult to reap, because of the large, thick stalks. To top it all off, it is difficult to digest. Basically corn, when compared to wheat, requires more land for less yield, at a greater caloric expense, but provides less calories. In addition, corn was the only grain in the Americas, where as wheat was one of many different kinds of cereals with similar qualities.

The third dynamic that Diamond discusses as a causal factor in civilization building has to do with the geographical placement and shape of the continents. As a continent, Eurasia is wider than it is tall. Therefore large chunks of the land share latitude, and thus, climate. So a person, especially a person with a strong domesticated animal, would be able to share agricultural knowledge with their neighbors over greater spaces than their African and American counterparts, whose own continents are taller than they are wide.



Another necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient in civilization is salt. Jared Diamond does not touch on issue of salt, but Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt, does. Though the book is not intended to be a dissertation on the rise of civilizations, it, by virtue of the history of salt, does spend quite a few pages on the importance of salt to civilizations. He notes how virtually every major city, from Timbuktu to Tenochtitlan were near a salt reserve.

It is well known that humans need salt in their diet to survive. However, the diet of hunter gathers does not need any additional salt, as the meat eaten provides enough. It is only with the invention of agriculture that people had diets that required them to augment their meals with mined salt.

Large scale societies require a large number of workers. To feed all of these workers a diet with enough meat to give them their healthful amount of salt would be far to expensive for early cities, it would have simply been impossible before the invention of feedlots. As a result workers were provided with salt. Though fairly expensive at the time, it was far more feasible. Kurlansky writes about how in ancient Egypt workers were paid if not completely, then partially with salt. The workers’ in Egyptian cities diet consisted of a grain, salt, and a few pickled vegetables. In Rome, the diet of the working class was similar: grain, salt and olives. Without salt the sheer numbers of workers would not have existed to create the cities that are a central feature of civilization.

Humans are not the only creatures to need salt. Animals do, too. Whereas Jared Diamond talks about the importance of access to domesticatable animals, Kurlansky talks about how domestication was achieved. He discusses how, through providing salt to certain animals, people were able to get the animals to become familiar with, and eventually depend upon, humans. This type of contact of course could be the catalyst for animal domestication, which is another central feature of civilization.

You may think civilization represents an advanced, enlightened state of human community where all have the potential to benefit. Or, perhaps, you see it as a terrible and new, dangerous misstep that will, if left to continue, destroy virtually all life. Its possible you are totally neutral about it. Regardless, it is clear that civilization is less the result of concerted effort and more the result of certain materials being more densely concentrated.

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