What is civilization?

The history, or historiography, not a science in the classical sense, because you can not repeat the experience occurred, and it is marked by subjectivity itself is a social science, and which aims to analyze the historical past following a rigorous method, and thus try to get knowledge for this experience. This definition gives another aspect is that the story never ends, as each generation reinterprets these events depending on political, economic or cultural.That global history becomes a collective human history. The great historian A.Toynbee concluded that in fact the history of mankind was the story of human groups we call "civilization", which are governed by a set of customs and norms, and to evolve as a living , are formed, born (from a previous civilization), grow, evolve and die. Those human groups and their historical developments Toynbee identifies with the Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and other well-known at the time that he developed his theory.So, the "Western" civilization is destined to die because facing processes that were comparable with previous civilizations. If we study the evolution of these ancient cultures, for a society to be considered civilization has to meet certain criteria:It must be supported by a set of common standards or equal, must be marked by constant aesthetic habits, so that the determining factors are the same for each of the civilizations. The art in each culture over time tends to be repetitive and ornate, with a clear defining aesthetic.Must have a moral or ethical, religious or not, is a common order that rules the destinies of that society.The study of civilizations is a constant revelation study, understand, erroneously or not, that civilization tends to human progress. This course addresses the need to define the elements on which to develop a civilization:Besides cultural evolution can be seen in the geographical evolution that change spatial axes determines that the ancient founding peripheral areas become almost submitted (in the case of Rome may seem strange, but we must not forget that the birth Rome , the dominant culture was the Etruscan, which was soon relegated). Thus the geographical space becomes a cornerstone of civilization, it is the geographical and economic foundations of these.We also noted the establishment of a socio-political arrangement is determined by two factors. The people and the rulers. This socio-political model is stable in some civilizations, for example in Egypt, where there is strong religious monarchy, but in other cases it is changing as Hellenism and Rome. In most cases this is a means of managing society, but in others it becomes an end, and in the extreme case of Egypt, to be a holy government, Pharaoh's life, we forget that it is a god, is what determines civilization itself.Civilizations consist of mixed populations, where a dominant ethnic group is controlled by the mother or the backbone of civilization, Latinos in the case of Rome, the Greeks in the case of Greece. Within each civilization there is a social hierarchy that determines the configuration of the different groups (classes)Civilization is also based on an economic model that generates a range of interests, and for obtaining the necessary resources for the development of that civilization, so we can have economic models, slave, feudal, mercantile, each group develops properly. In general, all these societies is marked by dynamism and evolution of institutions and social groups within them.Ours, Western civilization may be reaching its peak now, as it has reached the world, is a mercantile civilization surrounding the metropolis with its sacred center, Wall Street, where orders flow to the periphery in the form of processes economic and commercial. Ours is a civilization with huge problems and contradictions, as had never been seen, due to the size of this and the variety of thoughts and cultures that form, so we can not say whether it will last much or little. We said before that civilizations are born, develop and die, and ours is no exception, it lasts much or little depends on us. The changes you have to do to continue there will be difficult, colossal, commensurate with the size and complexity of this, but at least we have the largest mass of people capable of thinking and acting that history has known. Depend also of all that, in the event that our civilization disappears, are many or few references to it for future Toynbee can draw any conclusions about us. No matter how we tried in the future, the important thing is that we have forgotten.