agriculture

History & Society

Origins of Civilization

• Origins of Civilization: From Homo sapiens to the Bronze Age CollapseCivilization is extraordinarily recent. Homo sapiens has existed for roughly 300,000 years, but agriculture, permanent large settlements, cities, states, and writing are concentrated in roughly the last 12,000 years. For almost all of our species' history, humans lived without cities, kings, bureaucracies, or written records.