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I came across someone's site that lists ancient civilizations and their ages:http://hubpages.com/hub/How-long-do-empires-lastAt the end:
When I break the 56 civilizations down into phases (for example, Ancient Egypt has three phases), the total number of "distinct" civilizations is 74. The average length of time that a civilization lasts is 349.2 years. The median is 330 years.
Interesting to think about.
I think the title of the article is misleading. It seems to be based on length of empires rather than civilizations. Isn't that a difference? Shouldn't Ancient Roman civilization include both the republic and empire?
Seems that they defined them based on single continuous governmental entity. The word “empire” would obviously not have applied to all 56 in the list and so that word was not used. I agree that the word “civilization” it is somewhat misleading since we generally refer to Roman civilization as having lasted from the beginning of the Republic to the end of the Empire…not to mention that the Eastern Roman Empire was actually part of the Western Empire. To the dude's credit, he uses a definition of “civilization” that is located elsewhere on the site which uses the following criteria:
* A civilization is dominant in its region * A civilization is stable with roughly the same form of ruling power over its lifetime * A civilization usually has a capital city or center that gets identified with that civilziation * A civilization is bigger than a single city but it is not necessarily an empire. * A civilization has a strong historical presence
A civilization is stable with roughly the same form of ruling power over its lifetime
Wonder how Greece would fit in with all this seeing they had like 8 billion forms of government with many that were not exactly stable.
Okay, but if we look at it from their perspective, was an empire more likely to last longer in the past? Is it easier for an empire to topple today?
Okay, but if we look at it from their perspective, was an empire more likely to last longer in the past? Is it easier for an empire to topple today?
I would say the answer is inconclusive. While civilizations don't have to worry so much about being invaded by a foreign nation nowadays, the simple fact is that they are still mostly young. We will only be able to tell in a few hundred years how long our global peace lasts.
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