NCERT Book Class 6 Social Science The Beginnings of Indian Civilisation

What Is a Civilisation?

At the end of Chapter 4, we saw the first human groups settling down, practising agriculture, developing some technologies (such as construction, metallurgy, transport) and moving towards ‘civilisation’.

What, then, is civilisation? In general, the term is used for an advanced stage of human societies. To be precise, we will consider here that a ‘civilisation’ should have at least the following characteristics:

• some form of government and administration — to manage a more complex society and its many activities;

• urbanism — town-planning, the growth of cities and their management, which generally includes water management and a drainage system;

• a variety of crafts — including the management of raw materials (such as stone or metal) and the production of finished goods (such as ornaments and tools);

• trade both internal (within a city or a region) and external (with distant regions or other parts of the world) — to exchange all sorts of goods;

• some form of writing — needed to keep records and to communicate;

• cultural ideas about life and the world, expressed through art, architecture, literature, oral traditions or social customs;

• a productive agriculture — enough to feed not just the villages, but also the cities.