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Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike 2.0
By Greg Bayles, graphic remixed from Mary Harrsch |
Last week, I
posted a bunch of my curation findings as to digital civilizations specifically. This week, however, I've been working to flesh out my research in terms of the requirements for civilization to exist, and I've had some pretty good success through both social and more traditional modes of inquiry. On Monday, I posted to my Facebook and
Google+ profiles asking for people's insights as to the foundational elements of civilization. Google+ didn't yield a ton--just a
post from my sister--but I was able to start up a rather healthy conversation on Facebook and got a lot of insights from friends, especially those studying political science, history, and anthropology.
You can check out the conversation below if you prefer to just read through the responses (I personally like the one about chocolate-covered almonds), but to sum up the arguments, my friends gravitated toward five or six main points:
1. Social surplus (extra resources)
2. Unified sense of culture
3. Code of law
4. Cohesive economic system
5. Territory (according to the UN)
6. A population (a more obvious but nonetheless essential component)
