Four Great Ancient Civilizations

In Japanese and Chinese historiography, the Four Great Ancient Civilizations (simplified Chinese: 四大文明古国; traditional Chinese: 四大文明古國; pinyin: Sì Dà Wénmíng Gǔ Guó) were Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, which are identified as the cradles of civilization. The concept is popularly used in Japan and China—for example in history textbooks—but not generally known in the western world.

Origin

The origins of the phrase are unclear. According to one theory, it originated with Japanese archaeologist Namio Egami; his colleague Masaaki Sugiyama recalled that Egami used to say that he coined the phrase. The first known occurrence of the phrase "four great civilizations" can be traced to a textbook titled Revised World History (Japanese: 再訂世界史), published by in 1952 by the Yamakawa Publishing Company, where Egami worked.

Another theory is that the term originates with Liang Qichao, a Chinese intellectual that lived during the late Qing dynasty. Specifically, in his 1900 poem Song of the Pacific in the 20th Century (Chinese: 二十世纪太平洋歌), he wrote "there are four motherlands of ancient civilizations on earth: China, India, Egypt, and Asia Minor" (Chinese: 地球上古文明祖國有四：中國、印度、埃及、小亞細亞是也). This view of civilization was also influenced by Japanese thinkers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Ukita Zautami and Kayahara Kazan, who in turn were influenced by the western concept of a cradle of civilization.

Liang Qichao divided the history of the world into three ages: the river age, the sea age, and the ocean age. The Four Great Ancient Civilizations originated in the river age and all of them developed along rivers. Scholars believe that they were all built near rivers because there were fixed water sources that made it easier for agriculture and commerce to develop. Human beings are clearly inseparable from water, but some historians believe that at the beginning of Chinese civilization, it first occurred in the mountains and then expanded to river areas.

This four civilizations model is not universally used and has come under criticism from some Chinese historians in that the dates of the beginning of China's civilization does not place it in the first four.

Overview

Between 7000 and 5000 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere, the Mesopotamia, Nile, Indus, Ganges basins, as well as the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins have successively produced the world's Four Great Ancient Civilizations. These four civilizations have successively entered the Bronze Age from the Neolithic Age, and then entered the Metal Age. Much of the philosophy, science, literature, art and other aspects of knowledge that humans possess today can generally be traced back to the contributions of these ancient civilizations.

Among the social systems of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations, Egypt and Babylon adopted slavery, India implemented the caste system, and China adopted the feudal system and the well-field system before the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. Each civilization had its own myths and legends. The state entities were born later. In ancient times, religious myths were used to strengthen monarchy. The ruler of Babylon Hammurabi claimed to be "descendants of Moon God", and the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh claimed to be "the son of Sun God", and the Chinese monarch claimed to be the "Son of Heaven".

The Four Great Ancient Civilizations all have their own calendars, each year is divided into 12 months and has leap months. Each civilization created its own writing. Civilizations in the Indus, Yellow and Mesopotamia river basins all used pottery wheels to make pottery. Egypt and Mesopotamia both calculated pi earlier, and China discovered the Pythagorean theorem earlier (or its practical application), while India invented Indian numerals (Arabic numerals).

See also

• Civilization state
• Five thousand years of Chinese civilization