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242 The Urigin of CiviIisation

destructiwe/creatiwe synthesis inherent in Prigogine's concept of a vigorous new order emerging from the collapse of the old, rather than the explosiwe burst of a true ciwilisation efflorescence. Indulging perhaps in historical speculation, Earl also captures the pivotal essence of the Augustan age as a bridge uniting Classical Greece with the modern world, when he writes,

In the last months of his life Julius Caesar ....... projected an

inwasion of Parthia.........Had he lived to carry out this design,

the result would have been total defeat for the Roman army......

Caught in the desert (it) would hawe been shot to pieces by the mounted archers of Parthia. The loss of the East would have followed and in the West civil war among the contenders for Caesar's power. Romę and all she stood for might well hawe gone

down to chaos...... That catastrophe Brutus and the Conspirators

awerted, but another appeared, less dramatic, morę insidious, egually fatal; if the diwision of the Roman empire of Octawian and Anthony, which corresponded to all the facts of geography and eth-nology, language and culture, had been perpetuated, if the Roman world had split permanently into two exclusiwe parts, then the West would hawe died, cut off from the rewenues of the East on which it depended for life. If Anthony, not Octawian, had been wictorious at Actium, the result would probably hawe been similar though slower. That this did not happen, that the Roman empire was not merely held together but fused into a new unity in which East and West support-ed each other in a relationship of mutual benefit, which endured to the foundation of Constantine and beyond, was the greatest of all the achiewements of Augustus. It is not a dim episode in the history of a remote people. The age of Augustus forms a Cardinal epoch in the history of all Europę and its effects and results are with us still today.⁷⁷

Although the walue of Augustus' reign to the modern world is, therefore, quite inestimable, the fully rounded subsystem interactions we might expect of an explosiwe ciwilisation ewent are not entirely obwious from the history of Romę. Perhaps the pragmatic Romans lacked the essence of the porę intell-ectual spark that enneruated the Sumenans and the Greeks. Ciwilisations hawe dynamie qualities, flowing though time, so we must not expect them to always fit precisely into our arbitrary categories, and yet, here again, in the case of Romę, we can discern a crucial forty year generation, from around 50-10 BC which seems to span the crux of the main transformation.⁷® Augustus then perpetuated along a broad front changes which were incipiently emerging during Caesar's dictatorship.

The relationships that may link high cultures, dissipatiwe structures and ciwilisations can also be ewaluated by examining ciwilisation in the modern world. Here we confront the woid that this ewolwing phenomenon, so patently ewident to us all, currently presents in the social Sciences. Archaeologists explore the origins and emergence of ancient ciwilisations as part of the riddle of reconstructing antiquity, and some modern historians hawe deweloped theories on ciwilisation, but for most, it is accepted as found, treated, in

generał, as a mat ter of fact; its exact character and origin do not, it seeras excite the same lewel of interest. Yet, superficially, it looks as if five thousand years of culturał ewolution may have been metamorphosed within the passage of just a few centuries, to forge an entirely new synthesis, the international ciwilisation of the modern age.

In chapter 1 we rewiewed a rangę of definitions for identifying ancient ciwilisations, of which the two most relewant options were Clyde Kluckhohn's triad (towns with ower 3000 inhabitants, a written language and monumental ceremoniał centres), and Professor Renfrew's definition of ciwilisation as an artifact of man interposed between himself and naturę. As we hawe seen, Colin Renfrew's definition formed the basis for a classification of the culture system, built along concepts suggested by System Theory. The triad proposed by Kluckhohn encapsulates the complex interactions of all fiwe subsystems, illustrating the higher lewel of culturał actiwity generated by sophisticated ciwilisations. Yet, as noted earlier, it does not help in defining different grades of ciwilisation, a notion which is patently relewant to any deeper consideration of the modern world. Moreower, the reąuirement of a uniwersał classification demands that it should be equally relewant to all ancient and all contemporary cases.

For an examination of modern ciwilisations here, we shall continue to use the dynamie test. A ciwilisation genesis exists when exciting, imaginatiwe and uniquely new ideas, innowations and institutions are seen to radiate widely across all the fiwe culture subsystems. They generate an interacting total entity which can be recognised as representing a decisiwe break with the past. Then, by emulation, many of its predominantly nowel innowations and institutions rapidly become absorbed into, or adopted by, other contemporary and newly emerging societies.

Ciwilisation in the Modern World

Studying the genesis of ciwilisation in antiquity offers a new perspectiwe for assessing the adwance of ciwilisation ower the past four hundred years. For this period we hawe substantially morę materiał, both quantitatiwe and qualitatiwe, to work with. Out we must surely begin to think in terms of grades of ciwilisation when we rewiew the changes engendered across a broad front from AD 1400 to the present. Ewen if we accept that the Renaissance world of the fourteenth century was ciwilised, a weritable chasm separates us now from the people of that period, with respect to wirtually ewery facet of daily life. Nonetheless, there is copious ewidence from right across Europę that there were many towns with morę than 5000 inhabitants, (albeit far less than the numbers today), and writing remained, as it had been throughout antiquity, the special skill of a socially and politically adwantaged elite centred around the church. Finally, of course, there were innumerable and quite magnifcent monumental buildings. Thus, the Kluckhohn triad can throw no