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The terms also appear in esoteric pseudohistory, such as the Urantia Book, claiming the title for "the second Eden", or the pseudoarchaeology related to Megalithic Britain ( Civilization One 2004,Īncient Britain: The Cradle of Civilization 1921).įurther information: Neolithic Revolution, Urban revolution, and Chalcolithic
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It has been used in Eastern as well as Western cultures, for instance, in Indian nationalism ( In Search of the Cradle of Civilization 1995) and Taiwanese nationalism ( Taiwan - The Cradle of Civilization 2002). plays a certain role in national mysticism. Charles Rollin's Ancient History (1734) has "Egypt that served at first as the cradle of the holy nation". The figurative use of cradle to mean "the place or region in which anything is nurtured or sheltered in its earlier stage" is traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to Spenser (1590). The concept "cradle of civilization" is the subject of much debate. The term has also been used to refer to Ancient Greece as the cultural sire of Western civilization. Scholars have defined civilization by using various criteria such as the use of writing, cities, a class-based society, agriculture, animal husbandry, public buildings, metallurgy, and monumental architecture. The extent to which there was significant influence between the early civilizations of the Near East and the Indus Valley with the Chinese civilization of East Asia ( Far East) is disputed. These are the Caral-Supe region in South America, the Veracruz region in North America, Ancient Egypt in Africa, and Mesopotamia, Ancient India, and Ancient China in Asia. The term has frequently been applied to a variety of regions, in particular to Ancient India, Ancient China, and to the Ancient Near East during the Chalcolithic (see Ubaid period), which contained the Fertile Crescent.Īccording to current thinking, there was no single "cradle" of civilization instead, several cradles of civilization developed independently, with the appearance of agriculture. Pictured are the Giza Pyramids.Ī cradle of civilization is any location where civilization is understood to have independently emerged. Among the various cradles of civilization is Ancient Egypt.
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