Central Civilization

= hypothesis by David Wilkinson : " "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years". [1]

Introduction

Video by Robert Conan Ryan via https://www.facebook.com/robert.ryan.9279/posts/pfbid02jYEawSjq29D6Y1kvrLqnMwuYf7jqha7vH6voMRN1EqNh7QiiZ1GiUu1yJ1JL9ZUHl

"In this short video I briefly explain how world systems theory 3.0 is different from other approaches to analyzing civilization I stress the fact that there has never been a full collapse of the Magisteria. Civilizations come and go but the Magisteria only gets bigger and absorbs everything. Since the 20th century the world Magisteria has absorbed all Civilizations. All!! No civilization has ever fully collapsed that has joined the world Magisteria. Sure individual governments have fallen and borders are redrawn. But all Civilizations who joined the Magisteria have lived on through a shared system of knowledge. In other words, there won't be any civilization collapse because we are already in a post-civilization global landscape. Any local collapses will simply be restored by the world system as a whole - the Magisteria is a single global Knowledge system that already penetrates all major governments.. As such, reconstruction of smaller parts of "collapsed" world system is inevitable. Instead of thinking in terms of civilization collapse, we should be thinking in terms of a post civilizational world and the transhuman construction of posthuman creations. Even if the world goes through wars and resource shortages, the world will not lose the Magisteria (knowledge won't collapse). We should be more worried about the justification of HUMANS in a world where we can genetically modify and digitally augment the agents within this magisteria to posthuman statuses."

Description

David Wilkinson:

"Today there exists on the Earth only one civilization, a single global civilization. As recently as the nineteenth century several independent civilizations still existed (i.e. those centered on China, Japan, and the West); now there remains but one.

Central Civilization. The single global civilization is the lineal descendant of, or rather I should say the current manifestation of, a civilization that emerged about 1500 B.C. in the Near East when Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations collided and fused. This new fusional entity has since then expanded over the entire planet and absorbed, on unequal terms, all other previously independent civilizations.

I label this entity "Central" civilization."

(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=ccr)

2. Wikipedia:

"Wilkinson redefines civilization on connectedness criterion, not cultural criterion, as "a city-state, cities-state, or tightly linked politico-military network of such states that are not a part of a larger such network", and considers civilizations as world-systems.

Wilkinson introduces the idea of "Central Civilization" or "Central World-System", which he argues emerged about 1500 BC with the integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, and then engulfed the Aegean civilization in 560 BC, Indic civilization in 1000, the New World after the Age of Discovery, and finally the Far Eastern civilizations in 1850. This idea has been followed and developed by other scholars.

The notion that the Middle East and Europe are in the same system was also adopted by Ian Morris's award-winning book Why the West Rules—For Now, which defines the West as all civilizations descending from the Fertile Crescent, rather than just the traditional Western world."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilkinson_(political_scientist))

More information

• "Civilizations as Networks: Trade, War, Diplomacy, and Command-Control", 8 Complexity no.1 (September–October 2002), pp. 82–86.
• Wilkinson, David (1987). "The Connectedness Criterion and Central Civilization". In Melko, Matthew; Scott, Leighton (eds.). The Boundaries of Civilizations in Space and Time. University Press of America. pp. 17–21. ISBN 0819164925.
• "Civilization: Definitions and Recommendations". International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilization. Archived from the original on October 1, 2014. Retrieved August 27, 2014.
• Wilkinson, David (Spring 1994). "Civilizations Are World Systems!". Comparative Civilizations Review. 30 (30): 59–71. Retrieved November 24, 2017.
• Wilkinson, David (Fall 1987). "Central Civilization". Comparative Civilizations Review. 17 (17): 31–59. Retrieved November 24, 2017.
• Wilkinson, David (Fall 2004). "The Power Configuration Sequence of the Central World System, 1500-700 BC". Journal of World-Systems Research. 10 (3): 654–720. Retrieved November 24, 2017.

* Article: Wilkinson, D. (1996). World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs Central Civilization. Journal of World-Systems Research, 2(1), 117–185. doi

URL = https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/63

"This is one in a series of papers on civilizational issues. Its predecessors have argued for the existence of a world system/civilization, "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years. If continuing social struggles both are and imply continuing social entities, there is social continuity-stabilities, trends and cycles--in the struggles forming and maintaining Central Civilization. A consequence of accepting Central Civilization as a genuine entity, or a reason for treating it as a fruitful heuristic, is, in particular, the finding that it possesses a political cycle (states system--universal empire) characteristic of other entities commonly treated as civilizations (Wilkinson, 1986; 1987, 53-56; 1988) as well as a political evolution (from multistate anarchy to balance-of-power) incipient but never successfully established in other world systems (Wilkinson, 1985)."