civilizations

"The greatness of Manipuri is thus a reflection of the height of civilisation of its speakers. ... As a speech of a well advanced people, Manipuri has already made notable contributions to the Indian culture and literature."

"Lai Haraoba stands supreme, have successfully preserved the essence of the Meitei civilization and world-view."

"The Laiharaoba is the bedrock on which the entire Meitei civilization rests."

"Hakchang saba describes the birth and growth of the child and the subsequent processes of agriculture and house construction, symbolising the offering of Meitei civilization and culture to the lais."

"Moirang had a peculiar relationship with the Meiteis, who needed to appease and appropriate its pride, independence, and richness of lore into the corpus of Meitei civilization."

"Meitei women have been the solid bastion of traditional Meitei culture and civilization."

"Poireiton is looked upon as the harbinger of Meitei civilization and evolution. The fire he brought with him has been still burning in Andro, a village of the Meitei aboriginals."

"Credit should be given to the ancient Meitei civilization of Manipur to identify the Southern Zeliangrong area by the political Subjugation of the Southern section of the community and the construction of a road by the British, between Manipur and Cachar in the West."

"Neglect in protecting our heritage of natural resources could prove extremely harmful for the human race and for all species that share common space on planet earth. Indeed, there are many lessons in human history which provide adequate warning about the chaos and destruction that could take place if we remain guilty of myopic indifference to the progressive erosion and decline of nature’s resources. Much has been written, for instance, about the Maya civilization, which flourished during 250–950 AD, but collapsed largely as a result of serious and prolonged drought. Even earlier, some 4000 years ago a number of well-known Bronze Age cultures also crumbled extending from the Mediterranean to the Indus Valley, including the civilizations, which had blossomed in Mesopotamia. More recent examples of societies that collapsed or faced chaos on account of depletion or degradation of natural resources include the Khmer Empire in South East Asia, Eastern Island, and several others. Changes in climate have historically determined periods of peace as well as conflict. The recent work of David Zhang has, in fact, highlighted the link between temperature fluctuations, reduced agricultural production, and the frequency of warfare in Eastern China over the last millennium. Further, in recent years several groups have studied the link between climate and security. These have raised the threat of dramatic population migration, conflict, and war over water and other resources as well as a realignment of power among nations. Some also highlight the possibility of rising tensions between rich and poor nations, health problems caused particularly by water shortages, and crop failures as well as concerns over nuclear proliferation."

"The origin of the Maya civilization is lost in the remote past, not even the shadowy half lights of tradition illumining its beginnings. The very earliest inscriptions literally burst upon us fully formed, the flower of long-continued observations expressed in a graphic system of exceeding intricacy. It seems probable indeed, judging from the complexity of the earliest texts, which are in stone, that the hieroglyphic writing must have been developed on some perishable medium, such as wood or fiber paper or parchment, the destruction of which by natural processes would satisfactorily explain the entire absence of its earlier stages."

"For more than ten centuries until A.D. 900, the Maya flourished in the lowlands of Central America, reaching a population near ten million and reliant on delicate water management in a drought-prone terrain. Like the great civilizations of the , , Nile, and rivers, the Maya could overcome droughts that stretched years or even decades. But a three-hundred-year dearth of rain—lake-bed cores show that it lasted from 750 to 1050—proved too much."

"For many centuries before Christ to about AD 900, the lowland Maya civilization achieved its apogee in the and the adjacent portions of Mexico, Belize, and western Honduras, what today we call the "Maya lowlands" ... For over 1,500 years, this region was covered by a network of kingdoms dominated by "holy lords," sacred kings who were linked by complex ties of kinship, ritual, trade, and military alliance. Their political and religious centers included great acropoli of massed palaces, temples, stone tombs, and ballcourts. These centers of power and pageantry were supported by thousands of farmers who practiced a complex system rain forest agriculture—a system which only is beginning to be understood."

"Taken as a whole, [the Indus Valley people’s] religion is so characteristically Indian as hardly to be distinguished from still living Hinduism."

"It is difficult to see what is particularly non-Aryan about the Indus Valley civilization."

"Not often has it been given to archaeologists, as it was given to Schliemann at Tiryns and Mycenae, or to [Aurel] Stein in the deserts of Turkestan, to light upon the remains of a long-forgotten civilization. It looks, however, at this moment, as if we were on the threshold of such a discovery in the plains of the Indus."

"A continuous series of cultural developments links the so-called two major phases of urbanization in South Asia . . . The essential of Harappan identity persisted."

"The Indus civilization (…) is doubly remarkable: first, because it was the only complex society of either Antiquity or the modern world, that operated without social stratification and the state; and, second, in what must be a related phenomenon, because it was an agrarian society in which the villages were not oppressed by the towns (…) In sum, Indus Civilization is by far the most egalitarian of any of the pristine Old or New World civilizations, and that by a long way and by any measure."

"Indians have always been justly proud of their age-old civilization and believing that this civilization was as ancient as any in Asia, they have long been hoping that archaeology would discover definite monumental evidence to justify their belief. This hope has now been fulfilled."

"There is one curious fact in regard to the beginnings of Indian history. For the Indus Valley culture, we have abundant archaeological data, but no written evidence. For the early Vedic culture we have abundant written evidence but no archaeological data."

"Hitherto it has commonly been supposed that the pre-Aryan peoples of India were... black skinned, flat nosed barbarians. . . . Never for a moment was it imagined that five thousand years ago, before the Aryans were heard of, Panjab and Sind . . . were enjoying an advanced and singularly uniform civilization of their own . . . even superior to that of contemporary Mesopotamia and Egypt. . . . there is nothing that we know of in prehis- toric Egypt or Mesopotamia or anywhere else in western Asia to compare with the well- built baths and commodious houses of the citizens of Mohenjodara. . . . nothing that we know of in other countries at this period bears any resemblance, in point of style, to the miniature faience models . . . which . . . are distinguished by a breadth of treatment and a feeling for line and plastic form that has rarely been surpassed in glyptic art."

"The Indus civilization has challenged scholars’ understanding since its discovery some eighty years ago, and in recent years the application of systematic and problem-orientated research, coupled with much new and unexpected data, has overturned many previous interpretations."

"The great rivers, for all their beneficence, were at the same time treacherous and formidable enemies. If not constrained and directed by wise, largescale and sustained effort, they were destroyers no less than fertilizers."

"In 1922 archaeologists started to turn up evidence of the Indus civilization. Mohenjodaro and Harappa have had most of the publicity, but new discoveries are still being made all the time.... Common sense might suggest that here was a striking example of a refutable hypothesis that had in fact been refuted. Indo-European scholars should have scrapped all their historical reconstructions and started again from scratch. But that is not what happened. Vested interests and academic posts were involved. Almost without exception the scholars in question managed to persuade themselves that despite appearances the theories of the philologists and the hard evidence of archeology could be made to fit together. The trick was to think of the horse-riding Aryans as conquerors of the cities of the Indus civilization in the same way that the Spanish conquistadores were conquerors of the cities of Mexico and Peru or the Israelites of the Exodus were conquerors of Jericho. The lowly Dasa of the Rig Veda , who had previously been thought of as primitive savages, were now reconstructed as members of a high civilization."

"These discoveries establish the existence in Sind (the northernmost province of the Bombay Presidency) and the Punjab, during the fourth and third millennium B.C., of a highly developed city life; and the presence, in many of the houses, of wells and bathrooms as well as an elaborate drainage-system, betoken a social condition of the citizens at least equal to that found in Sumer, and superior to that prevailing in contemporary Babylonia and Egypt. . . . Even at Ur the houses are by no means equal in point of construction to those of Mohenjo-daro."

"Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations."

"There appear to be many continuities [between the Indus and later historical cultures]. Agricultural and pastoral subsistence strategies continue, pottery manufacture does not change radically, many ornaments and luxury items continue to be produced using the same technology and styles . . . There is really no Dark Age isolating the protohistoric period from the historic period."

"The ethos of the ancient Indian Civilization is shaped during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods."

"Yet wherever one looks, in non-specialist guides, or in holiday brochures, one reads about the 'mysterious' Etruscans; hidden Etruria; underground Etruria — as if the culture is somehow concealed from us. It is a sales gimmick which has been very useful and profitable, but it is also misleading. (...) The Etruscans were no more more mysterious than most other peoples of archaic Italy."

"It is indeed a striking thought that the same region of central Italy twice, in the shape of ancient Etruria and modern Tuscany, been the source of civilization in Italy. Since the seventh century BC and from the fifteenth century onwards, in the dawn of antiquity as well as at the beginning of modern times, the same region of the peninsula has been distinguished by exceptional qualities. The birth and re-birth or Renaissance of Italy had the same cradle."

"Not many authors of general books about the Romans feel bound to discuss the alleged Trojan ancestry of their subject. In sharp contrast, hardly anyone outside the inner circle of tecnici seems able to write about the Etruscans without reflecting at length on the supposed mystery of their origins and on the solution that may or (as has long been beyond all doubt) may not lie in the East, specifically in Lydia. The reason for this is the erroneous but still widely held conviction that the authority of Herodotus is involved."

"Shame on the false Etruscan Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march for Rome!"

"What dark-haired daughter of a Lucumo Bore on her slim white finger to the grave This the first gift her Tyrrhene lover gave, Those five-and-twenty centuries ago?"

"Is it the secret of the long-nosed Etruscans? The long-nosed, sensitive-footed, subtly-smiling Etruscans Who made so little noise outside the cypress groves?"

"The tradition that they originally came from Lydia, reported as a Lydian story by Herodotus, is based on erroneous etymologies, like many other traditions about the origins of 'fringe' peoples of the Greek world. Although the (no doubt numerous) early group movements in and out of Italy, and within its borders, are irretrievably lost, the Etruscans must be regarded as an Italian people."

"This is the moment of the homogenization of the world, when the diversities of societies are eroding, when a global civilization is emerging. There are no exotic places left on Earth to dream about. And for this reason there remains an even greater and more poignant need today for a vehicle, a device, to get us somewhere else. Not all of us; only a few – to the deserts of the Moon, the ancient seacoasts of Mars, the forests of the sky. There is something comforting in the idea that one day a few representatives of our little terrestrial village might venture to the great galactic cities."

"I say looking at the next 100 years that there are two trends in the world today. The first trend is toward what we call a type one civilization, a planetary civilization... The danger is the transition between type zero and type one and that’s where we are today. We are a type zero civilization. We get our energy from dead plants, oil and coal. But if you get a calculator you can calculate when we will attain type one status. The answer is: in about 100 years we will become planetary. We’ll be able to harness all the energy output of the planet earth. We’ll play with the weather, earthquakes, volcanoes. Anything planetary we will play with. The danger period is now, because we still have the savagery. We still have all the passions. We have all the sectarian, fundamentalist ideas circulating around, but we also have nuclear weapons. ...capable of wiping out life on earth. So I see two trends in the world today. The first trend is toward a multicultural, scientific, tolerant society and everywhere I go I see aspects of that birth. For example, what is the Internet? Many people have written about the Internet. Billions and billions of words written about the Internet, but to me as a physicist the Internet is the beginning of a type one telephone system, a planetary telephone system. So we’re privileged to be alive to witness the birth of type one technology... And what is the European Union? The European Union is the beginning of a type one economy. And how come these European countries, which have slaughtered each other ever since the ice melted 10,000 years ago, how come they have banded together, put aside their differences to create the European Union? ...so we’re beginning to see the beginning of a type one economy as well..."

"This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization. We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some - perhaps many - may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message: This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."

"Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive."

"Culture suggests agriculture, but civilization suggests the city. In one aspect civilization is the habit of civility; and civility is the refinement which townsmen, who made the word, thought possible only in the civitas or city."

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars."

"The dramatic growth of human civilization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would not have been possible without the discovery and exploitation of stored sunlight power and the ancient dead remains of organisms in coal and oil deposits, which, as numerous theorists have argued, already reached peak levels decades ago, or are soon reaching them, and will rapidly decline by 2050. The exploitation of coal deposits to power the rapid growth of industrial capitalism was an unrepeatable one-and-done shot, and precipitated the current climate crisis."

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

"Whatever the virtues of a civilization may be, it immediately belies them if it buys them by means of injustice and tyranny."

"Civilization depends upon the control of our instincts--aggression foremost among them."

"It is essential that all thinking people should give time and thought to the consideration of the major world problems with which we are now faced. Some of them can be solved with relative rapidity—given common sense and a correctly appreciated self-interest; others will require foresighted planning and a long patience as, one by one, the necessary steps are taken, leading to the readjustment of human values and the inauguration of new attitudes of mind regarding right human relations. In the recognition of the growth in human consciousness and in a realization of the distinction obviously existing between primitive men and our modern intelligent humanity lie the grounds for an unshaken optimism as to human destiny. Events in the immediate foreground do not blot out the long history of human development and obliterate recognition of the long range changes which have taken place within the human consciousness"

"We civilized men do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick .... There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands... Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man itself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."

"Since the idea of order and subordination succumbed to barbarian brawn and brutality in the fifth century, the civilized world has been like a child brought up by his father. It has needed the great mother heart to teach it to be pitiful, to love mercy, to succor the weak and ca, re for the lowly."

"Civilization is by its nature bourgeois in the deepest spiritual sense of the word. 'Bourgeois' is synonymous precisely with the civilized kingdom of this world and the civilized will to organized power and enjoyment of life. The spirit of civilization is that of the middle classes; it is attached and clings to corrupt and transitory things; and it fears eternity. To be a bourgeois is therefore to be a slave of matter and an enemy of eternity. The perfected European and American civilizations gave rise to the industrial-capitalist system, which represents not only a mighty economic development but the spiritual phenomenon of the annihilation of spirituality."

"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph."

"It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."