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How Civilization Interacted with the Environment

The word “civilization” connotes establishing a nation’s society with a high level of occupational specialism and the development of ancient religious, intellectual, and cultural traditions. It has frequently connected major civilizations’ emergence and fall to changing weather patterns. The critical need for continuous crop production substantiated this connection throughout these times, which is extremely susceptible to climate circumstances, particularly water availability. This paper will discuss how the Western and Non-Western civilizations interacted with the environment and the factors that contributed to the decline of these civilizations.

When studying culture, we must first examine our own beliefs and views. “A people without knowledge of their prior history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots,” Marcus Garvey once said. We must first drawback the ground and examine our roots to examine our history. The “root” systems of non-Western and Western civilizations are vast and diverse. People exploited the Natural Environment as human culture strengthened from gathering and hunting societies to cultivating societies. They cleared woods to rear animals and harvest food. Humans were mostly scavenging about 12,000 years ago, which means they did not engage with their habitats as extensively as farmers do today. Now we find people conducting highly intrusive farming in many parts of the world 3,000 years ago.

People began clearing forests to produce food and animal and plant domestication to rely on social interaction during these periods. Early herders also used land clearing and selective selection to alter their surroundings. While the changes occurred at different rates, the instances are now widely known and can provide information into how our connection with the environment and its resources has deteriorated. We noticed a faster trajectory of environmental effect. While the rate of change in the environment is considerably faster now, we can see the effects of human activity on the environment many years ago.

Ancient towns were frequently at the center of the first civilizations. The Sumerian civilization, which prospered in Mesopotamia amid the shores of the country’s two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, is one such example. Long before the Sumerians prospered circa, people lived in this region. This civilization handles key advancements such as inventing the wheel and cuneiform writing and the development of massive cities such as Uruk. King Sargon influenced the Akkadian civilization by uniting the different cities under a new capital, Akkad, and founding the Akkadian kingdom. (Acharya et al., 342)

This empire suffered a serious defeat roughly a century after its founding. The term Akkadian state collapse is frequently used to characterize the collapse of political dominance of these great cities across the region, which often coincides with major violent battles and the expulsion of a substantial portion of urban inhabitants. However, it is not a true collapse because evidence of occupation can still be detected in the area years later. Geological records have detected substantial dust concentrations in Tell Leilan in modern-day Syria and marine sediments in the Gulf of Oman.

These occurrences point to a rapid transition to drier climate patterns. Some literature mention far more challenging agricultural prospects implying that major climate change had a considerable effect on agriculture and, as a result, on the Akkadian empire’s unity. Mesopotamia’s aridification would be related to the freezing of water bodies throughout the North Atlantic from a geological standpoint since such an environmental connection has been proven for such a current climate. Temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean have dropped according to past climate records. Climate change is not the only factor contributing to the Akkadian empire’s collapse. (Pavlyshyn et al., 236)

These large climate changes have unavoidably influenced agriculture, making it harder to supply the population’s needs. These problems have probably led to city strife and political power instability. The Mayan civilization, which conquered much of southern Mexico, including the Yucatán Peninsula, was the second civilization. The Mayans settled in small settlements throughout the pre-Classical era and altered their surroundings by cutting the forest and planting the first crops, particularly corn. This progress is aided, as it was for the Sumerian and Akkadian empires, by a perfect system of writing and calendar, allowing for the most efficient management of agricultural holdings.

The creation of some city-states, such as Tikal and Palenque, coincides with establishing a significant political and religious power centered on a “king-divine.” Between these towns, a complex interplay of conflicts and alliances occurred, leading to the construction of ever more colossal temples and pyramids, around which more and more people sought protection. As the population of towns grows, so does the exploitation of cropland. Sped-up deforestation appears to have happened during the classical period. This deforestation revealed the peninsula’s natural substrate: a karst marble plateau that is very porous to precipitation, except where soil created by a dense plant cover keeps it. (Dalacoura et al., 342)

The quantity of rainfall in this part of Central America is directly proportional to the location of the intertropical convergence zone. This zone’s only seasonal cycle produces rainfall in the summer and a water deficit in the winter. The resumption of the rainfall each year and the availability of considerable soil ensured a water reserve necessary for maximal agricultural area utilization for Mayan agriculture.

Lake sediment records from the north and central parts of the Yucatán peninsula, and some marine sedimentary archives from northern Venezuela, were collected to recreate the history of this water level. The ITCZ’s southern migration described these climatic phenomena, which prohibited summer rainfall from coming to the north and irrigating Mayan lands. Despite an extraordinarily well-developed water retention system at the surface, through engineering construction, and in natural reservoirs known as cenotes, these hydrological shortfalls are likely to have affected crop output.

Indeed, researchers saw an upsurge in political unrest between the many city-states, as well as a major departure of urban people around the same time. The end of the classical period, often known as the fall of Mayan civilizations, is marked by removing the supremacy of the big cities in Yucatán’s core area. The phrase “collapse” is derogatory because the Mayan people and culture have survived by assimilating into a new culture in the peninsula’s north or living in small isolated settlements. (Makarova et al., 98)

In a context very different from the previous example, and while climate variations are certainly not the only cause of a civilization’s destabilization, the temporal coincidence of both instances has most likely sped up the pace of major changes in a human society’s functioning, calling its sustainability into question. The “non-West” refers to states that sprang from communities that did not experience the West’s ideas, beliefs, or advances. The former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia are among them. They include Latin America in this class, even though it is in the Western Hemisphere and Catholicism. Hinduism, Animism, Buddhism, most of the nation’s Catholics, countless non-Western dialects, and the three major races are among the cultural and ethnic, and religious groups these states represent. The rise of a Western civilization dominated their civilizations, even though they were often sprung from once-mighty civilizations. (Acharya et al., 341)

By 1500, European culture had ushered in a new period of world affairs and business, social diversity, and scientific and technical advances. Some Non-western States became European colonists because of warfare and sophisticated technical and military might. Although technological progress aided European domination, cultural disparities were at the root of the problem. White intellectual supremacy has culminated in the inevitable subjection of “the other” non-Western inhabitants. A cultural divide separated the West and the “non-West.” Adda B. Bozeman, a well-known academic and expert on the connection between cultural history and intellect, sheds some light on this mindset.

In her book Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft, Bozeman claims Americans can only identify with the last two hundred years, contrasting the thousands of years that other non-Western civilizations have lived. She claims Americans possess a democratic responsibility that everyone else should follow. As a result, Religious and democratic ideas serve as a template over how Americans assess, engage with, and expect the behavior of other civilizations. This is especially true when Americans strive to understand the differences between non-Western civilizations. (Pavlyshyn et al., 236)

Ethnocentrism is the second trait brought on by American idealism. Ethnocentrism refers to the US’s inability to understand the non-Western world on its terms, an insistence on viewing it through the glasses of its Western experience, and the condescending attitudes that such ethnocentrism implies. Part of the reason for this mindset is that the United States grew up in relative isolation, not interacting with other civilizations until the twentieth century. In conclusion, the Western and Non-Western civilizations interacted with the environment, and some factors contributed to the decline of these civilizations.

Work Cited

Acharya, Amitav, and Barry Buzan. “Why is there no non-western international relations theory? Ten years on.” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific 17.3 (2017): 341-370.

Delacour, Katerina. “Global IR, global modernity and civilization in Turkish Islamist thought: a critique of culturalism in international relations.” International Politics 58.2 (2021): 131-147.

Makarova, Elena V., et al. “Divergence of supreme values of Russian world and western civilization social and philosophical analysis.” European Journal of Science and Theology 15.3 (2019): 97-107.

Pavlyshyn, Liudmyla, et al. “Ethical Problems Concernig Dialectic Interaction of Culture and Civilization.” Journal of Social Studies Education Research 10.3 (2019): 236-248.

Taylor, Kenneth B. “The passing of western civilization.” Futures 122 (2020): 102582.