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Irrigation is what ancient civilizations used to farm by using a flow of water and steer to dry land to boost crop production.

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Scientists from Kenya's Meru University of Science and Technology have come up with solution to unpredictable and irregular rainfall associated with climate change. They launched a mobile app that monitors the need for water in fields and controls irrigation equipment to deliver just what is needed.

"Farmers in the region traditionally water crops with cans or buckets", an inefficient way of getting water to plants, said Daniel Maitethia, an electronics lecturer at Meru University.

"The lack of measuring also means they water crops unevenly - so some may get too much water, and others not enough," he said.

The "sensor-based automatic irrigation system" app, launched last year, uses senors placed throughout a field to determine if soil is moist enough.

If it's too dry, a control unit uses solar panels to open the valve of a water tank, then close it again when the soil is damp enough.

The app was earlier tested at the university's own farm, and the system is now being rolled out to the public.

The combined app and irrigation system cost 50,000 Kenyan shillings ($480) per quarter of an acre, including solar panels and two drip irrigation lines. The system can be expanded to an additional quarter acre for 5,000 Kenyan shillings ($48).

While Maitethia acknowledges the upfront cost of the system is high, he believes it will not only reduce water waste but save labour costs as it does not require farmers to physically monitor it.

"If there is a glitch in the system, the farmer receives a text message notifying him of the problem," he explained. "A technician employed by the university will then help the farmer remotely with instructions, or physically come to the farm if needed."

Depending on the severity of the problem, a consultation with a technician can cost the farmer up to 500 Kenyan shillings (about $5).

Maitethia thinks that as more people buy the app, its cost could reduce by more than half.

The project was awarded 1 million Kenyan shillings ($9,600) by the Water Services Trust Fund in November as the best innovation in water management, he said.

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Kenya Scientists Launches Irrigation App That Cut Water Wastages, Crop Losses. - The pro Farmer

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Scientists from Kenya's Meru University of Science and Technology have come up with solution to unpredictable and irregular rainfall associated with climate change. They launched a mobile app that monitors the need for water in fields and controls irrigation equipment to deliver just what is needed.

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Quipu are what Incas used to communicate, these quipu often consisted of important information. Incas communicated through quipu by using colored threads knotted in different ways.

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Chasquis were the Incas messengers, they carried gifts, quipus, and messages. They traveled about 240 km a day, on foot.

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AncientPages.com - As a means of communications, the Inca used fast roadrunners to relay messages. The roadrunners were the mailmen of the Inca Empire. Not everyone could become a roadrunner, or chasqui.

It was a specialized and honorable profession that required studies.

Without these specially trained Incan mailmen, controlling the vast Inca Empire would have been almost impossible. The Incan communication system was based on chains of runners to relay messages. Most messages were oral. Some were sent by Quipu, the knotted language of the Inca.

Since the Inca had no writing system the runner had to remember the message, and relay it to the next person. The Incan roadrunners were very fast and they could carry messages at a rate of about 250 miles a day.
See also: Who Was The Sapa Inca? Story Of Atahualpa: The Last Emperor Of The Inca Empire Secrets Of Quipu - One Of The Most Mysterious Phenomena That Existed In Odd Number Of Dimensions
Each runner would run for one to two 1/2 miles along the famous Inca roads. There were small relay station buildings spaced along the roads where fresh runners watched and waited for the arrival of the messenger.

As he approached the relay station, the runner blew loudly on a conch shell to alert the next runner to get ready. The next runner would appear, running along side the first. Without stopping, the first runner told the second runner the message. The second runner then speeded ahead until he reached the next relay station.

Chasquis served for fifteen days at a time.

The chasqui did not have guards and they never carried weapons to defend themselves. They always ran alone.

Still, this type of Inca communication was highly effective. It was vital that the messages always reached the Sapa Inca accurately.

If it was discovered that a message was not accurate, punishment was severe and a roadrunner could be killed.
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Inca Communication: Mailmen Of The Inca Empire Were Fast Roadrunners | Ancient Pages

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Share this:AncientPages.com - As a means of communications, the Inca used fast roadrunners to relay messages. The roadrunners were the mailmen of the Inca Empire. Not everyone could become a roadrunner, or chasqui. It was a specialized and honorable profession that required studies. Without these specially trained Incan mailmen, controlling the vast Inca Empire would have [...]

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A terrace is a hill with spots leveled out for agriculture or salt production.

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Rice Terraces are used in farming to cultivate hilly or mountainous terrain. They are quite effective for growing crops that require a lot of water, such as rice. They also help to decrease erosion and surface runoff. Oh and they are quite stunning to photograph from above! Terraced fields are used widely across east, south and southeast Asia with many of the images below taken in Yunnan, China. Please enjoy these 25 unbelievable photographs.

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If you enjoyed this post, the Sifter highly recommends:

20 Impressive Moats Around the World

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25 Unbelievable Photographs of Rice Terraces

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Photograph via Desktopart.org Rice Terraces are used in farming to cultivate hilly or mountainous terrain. They are quite effective for growing crops that require a lot of water, such as rice. They also help to decrease erosion and surface runoff.

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Droughts are when a place goes without any rain or water, and is very hot.

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What is a drought?
A drought is when there is a lack of precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector. Its impacts result from the interplay between the natural event (less precipitation than expected) and the demand people place on water supply, and human activities can exacerbate the impacts of drought.

What causes a drought?
Drought has many causes. It can be caused by not receiving rain or snow over a period of time. If you live in a place where most of the water you use comes from a river, a drought in your area can be caused by places upstream from you not receiving enough moisture. There would be less water in the river for you and other people who live along the river to use. People can also play a big role in drought. If we use too much water during times of normal rainfall, we might not have enough water when a drought happens.

Can scientists predict if a drought is going to happen?
No! Studies conducted over the past century have shown that meteorological drought is never the result of a single cause. It is the result of many causes including, global weather patterns, high pressure, the tropical outlook and other global-scale variables.

Are there places in the United States that experience drought?
Yes! The Western United States is experiencing an exceptional and extreme drought at this time. To see the map, Click Here to see the current U.S. Drought Monitor.

What was the Dust Bowl?
Of all the droughts that have occurred in the United States, the drought events of the 1930s are widely considered to be the "drought of record" for the nation. The 1930s drought is often referred to as if it were one episode, but it was actually several distinct events occurring in such rapid succession that affected regions were not able to recover adequately before another drought began. The term Dust Bowl was coined in 1935 to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms. Although it technically refers to the western third of Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico, the Dust Bowl has come to symbolize the hardships of the entire nation during the 1930s.

How bad was the drought in the Dust Bowl years?
In the 1930s, drought covered virtually the entire Plains for almost a decade. The drought's direct effect is most often remembered as agricultural. Many crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. The resulting agricultural depression contributed to the Great Depression's bank closures, business losses, increased unemployment, and other physical and emotional hardships. Although records focus on other problems, the lack of precipitation would also have affected wildlife and plant life, and would have created water shortages for domestic needs.

What was the Black Sunday Dust Storm?
The 1930s were times of tremendous hardship on the Great Plains. Settlers dealt not only with the Great Depression, but also with years of drought that plunged an already-suffering society into an onslaught of relentless dust storms for days and months on end. They were known as dirt storms, sand storms, black blizzards, and "dusters." It seemed as if it could get no worse, but on Sunday, the 14th of April 1935, it got worse. The day is known in history as "Black Sunday," when a mountain of blackness swept across the High Plains and instantly turned a warm, sunny afternoon into a horrible blackness that was darker than the darkest night. Famous songs were written about it, and on the following day, the world would hear the region referred to for the first time as "The Dust Bowl."

How does a drought affect our lives?
Drought affects our lives in many different ways because water is such an important part of so many of our activities. We need water to live, and animals and plants do too. We need water to grow the food we eat. We also use water for many different things in our lives, like washing dishes, cooking, bathing, and swimming or river rafting. Water is also used to help make the electricity we use to run the lights in our houses and the video games you may like to play. When we don't have enough water for these activities because of a drought, many people and many different things will be affected in many different ways.

How can we help if we're in a drought?
One of the easiest steps we can take to help mitigate the impacts of drought is conserving water. If we use water wisely at all times, more water will be available to us and to plants and wildlife when a drought happens. We can lose a lot of water doing simple everyday tasks. Did you know that turning off the water while you brush your teeth can save more than 100 gallons of water a month? If you have a leaky faucet, the drips can add up to 300 gallons of wasted water a month.

What are the different types of drought?
There are four basic approaches to measuring drought: meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, and socioeconomic. The first three approaches deal with ways to measure drought as a physical phenomenon. The last deals with drought in terms of supply and demand, tracking the effects of water shortfall as it ripples through socioeconomic systems.

Meteorological drought is defined usually on the basis of the degree of dryness (in comparison to some "normal" or average amount) and the duration of the dry period. Definitions of meteorological drought must be considered as region specific since the atmospheric conditions that result in deficiencies of precipitation are highly variable from region to region. For example, some definitions of meteorological drought identify periods of drought on the basis of the number of days with precipitation less than some specified threshold. This measure is only appropriate for regions characterized by a year-round precipitation regime such as a tropical rainforest, humid subtropical climate, or humid mid-latitude climate.

Agricultural drought links various characteristics of meteorological (or hydrological) drought to agricultural impacts, focusing on precipitation shortages, differences between actual and potential evapotranspiration, soil water deficits, reduced groundwater or reservoir levels, and so forth. Plant water demand depends on prevailing weather conditions, biological characteristics of the specific plant, its stage of growth, and the physical and biological properties of the soil. A good definition of agricultural drought should be able to account for the variable susceptibility of crops during different stages of crop development, from emergence to maturity.

Hydrological drought is associated with the effects of periods of precipitation (including snowfall) shortfalls on surface or subsurface water supply (i.e., streamflow, reservoir and lake levels, groundwater). The frequency and severity of hydrological drought is often defined on a watershed or river basin scale. Although all droughts originate with a deficiency of precipitation, hydrologists are more concerned with how this deficiency plays out through the hydrologic system. Hydrological droughts are usually out of phase with or lag the occurrence of meteorological and agricultural droughts. It takes longer for precipitation deficiencies to show up in components of the hydrological system such as soil moisture, streamflow, and groundwater and reservoir levels. As a result, these impacts are out of phase with impacts in other economic sectors.

Socioeconomic definitions of drought associate the supply and demand of some economic good with elements of meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural drought. It differs from the aforementioned types of drought because its occurrence depends on the time and space processes of supply and demand to identify or classify droughts. The supply of many economic goods, such as water, forage, food grains, fish, and hydroelectric power, depends on weather. Because of the natural variability of climate, water supply is ample in some years but unable to meet human and environmental needs in other years. Socioeconomic drought occurs when the demand for an economic good exceeds supply as a result of a weather-related shortfall in water supply.

Aquifer - an area that contains large amounts of water under the surface of the earth.

Climate - day-to-day weather over a longer period of time. Climatology is the study of climate.

Climograph - a graph that shows monthly average temperature and precipitation for some location.

Dam - a structure built across a river to hold back water for a variety of reasons, including protecting areas from floods, storing water, and generating power.

Desalination - the process of removing salts and other minerals from seawater so that it can be used for drinking water.

Drought - less rainfall than is expected over an extended period of time, usually several months or longer. Or, more formally, it is a deficiency of rainfall over a period of time, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector.

Drought Index - a numerical scale that scientists use to describe the severity of a drought. Scientists take many kinds of data (like streamflow, rainfall, temperature, and snowpack) and "blend" it into a single number, called a drought index value, to make it easier to understand the drought conditions of a particular area. Drought indices are one type of drought indicator.

Drought I ndicator - a way to look at one or more variables, such as precipitation, to describe available water in soil or hydrologic systems. It may be a record of a single measurement, such as rainfall at a particular rain gauge. It may also be a complex index. Drought indices (indexes) are a subset of drought indicators.

Dust Bowl - an area of the U.S. Plains that included parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The term was coined in the 1930s, when dry weather and high winds caused many dust storms throughout the United States, but particularly in this area.

Erosion - a process that wears the earth's surface away, causing soil to move from one place to another. It's a natural process, but human activities can make it worse.

Groundwater - water that is found underground in spaces in soil, sand, or rocks.

Hydroelectricity - electricity created by channeling water through turbines in power stations located below dams.

Irrigation - an agricultural practice that involves providing water to crops through pipes, ditches, or streams.

Mitigation - actions that we can take before, or at the beginning of, drought to help reduce the impacts of drought. Mitigation includes actions as diverse as drought planning, implementing land use practices that increase the organic content and water-holding capacity of soil, and designing agricultural policy that doesn't encourage short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term productive capacity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses mitigation to mean reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses.

Reservoirs - water that's collected and stored in natural or manmade lakes.

Submarginal Farmland - lands with nutrient-poor soils and/or soils that have been damaged by poor cultivation practices.

Water Banking - a water management strategy that temporarily transfers water from those who are willing to lease it to those who are willing to pay to use it.

Water Recycling - reusing treated wastewater for purposes like agricultural and landscape irrigation. It's also referred to as water reclamation or water reuse.

Xeriscaping - a type of landscaping around homes and businesses that uses a limited amount of water.

Click on the chart to make larger!

Click Here to see the current U.S. Drought Monitor!

Lesson Plan: Here is a lesson plan on water conservation.

Lesson Plan: Here is a lesson plan on how drought affect agriculture.

Science Fair Project Ideas: Here is a complete list of science fair project ideas. Discover the science behind the weather that impacts us every day.

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What is a drought? A drought is when there is a lack of precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector.

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A Tlatoani is a leader that leads empires.

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Cuauhtémoc nació en 1496 en México-Tenochtitlan, fue hijo de Ahuízotl, fue guerrero y último tlatoani o gobernante mexica, antes de la caída de la ciudad capital Tenochtitlan en 1521. El nombre de Cuauhtémoc en lengua náhuatl significa " Águila que desciende " refiriéndose al momento en ésta pliega sus alas y cae en picado hacia abajo para golpear a su presa , por lo que este es un nombre que implica agresividad y determinación.

Cuauhtémoc asumió el mando como tlatoani tras la muerte de Cuitláhuac en el año 1520 y a él correspondió la defensa final de su ciudad. Después de una valerosa defensa, el 13 de agosto de 1521, tras deliberar en consejo se decidió la rendición. El gobernante mexica fue capturado, por un bergantín español, cuando trataba de abandonar la ciudad.

Hernán Cortés mantuvo prisionero a Cuauhtémoc en Coyoacán y codicioso de riquezas ordenó que lo torturaran, aplicándole aceite hirviendo en los pies, para que le revelara en dónde tenía escondido el tesoro de Moctezuma. Su proceder fue en vano, ya que Cuauhtémoc soportó estoicamente el cruel tormento.

Durante la expedición que Cortés realizó a las Hibueras decidió llevarse a Cuauhtémoc en previsión de un posible alzamiento indígena en la ciudad de México. El día 28 de febrero de 1525, por temor a una posible conjura de Cuauhtémoc, Cortés lo mandó a ahorcar junto con otros de sus compañeros.

El último gobernante mexica falleció en Itzamkanac, estado de Yucatán, la noche del 28 de febrero de 1525, y con ello el esplendor mexica se opacó. Por su valor y heroísmo en la lucha, y por su negativa a cualquier negociación con los españoles, es un símbolo de la identidad nacional mexicana.

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Cuauhtémoc nació en 1496 en México-Tenochtitlan, fue hijo de Ahuízotl, fue guerrero y último tlatoani o gobernante mexica, antes de la caída de la ciudad capital Tenochtitlan en 1521.

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Chinampas are small rectangles of fertile land used to grow crops, and are found on shallow lake beds.

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Codex is the word used to describe precious ancient books that told stories.

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Facsimile Finder - Medieval Manuscript Facsimiles

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One of the most precious manuscripts in the Escorial Library is that entitled Codex Conciliorum Albeldensis seu Vigilanus, which was generously donated to Philip II by the Count of Buendía, for the library. The manuscript comprises 429 large-sized folios (455 x 325 mm), written in double columns in Visigothic script, and is very luxurious by the standards of the time. Both text and illumination were finished in 976; it was produced for the Monastery of St. Martin at Albelda (Rioja) by the copyist Vigila, assisted, according to the colophon by to other illuminated named Sarracino and García; all three are pictured among other figures in one of the miniatures. The Monastery of St. Martin at Albelda was founded in the 10th century, when Rioja was governed by the kings of Pamplona, in the most important cultural location of the kingdom, and was even higher up than the no less famous monastery of San Millán de la Cogolla. The scriptorium was highly productive and well run, and the monks produced books on liturgical, spiritual and legal themes. Some of its manuscripts went to other countries, as for example a copy of San Ildefonso's treatise on the virginity of Mary, which was escorted to its destination by French bishop Godescalc du Puy in person, in the middle of the 10th century.

The Albelda codex is a monumental compendium of canon and civil law. The main corpus comprises complete accounts of all the general councils, to which were added a selection of canons and decrees by popes up to St Gregory the Great, a contemporary of St Isidore. It also contains the Fuero Juzgo, that is, the civil code used in Spain from the Gothic period up to the 13th century.

The work was enriched by the addition of other texts of historical and liturgical rather than legal interest, such as the Life of Mahomet, and the Albelda Short Chronicle or Calendar, in which we find the first mention and drawing in Europe of the Arabic numerals 1-9, without the 0.

This is a work of some luxury, embellished with 82 miniatures in brilliant colours, some of them covering a whole folio, with views of towns (Toledo, for example,) and portraits of famous persons. Although this is essentially an Hispanic work, the techniques used for the draperies are not those of the traditional Mozarabic Visigothic style, but rather inspired by Carolingian miniatures.

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One of the most precious manuscripts in the Escorial Library is that entitled Codex Conciliorum Albeldensis seu Vigilanus, which was generously donated to Philip II by the Count of Buendía, for the library. The manuscript comprises 429 large-sized folios (455 x 325 mm), written in double columns in Visigothic script, and is very luxurious by the standards of the time....

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Glyphs are symbols that ancient civilizations used as words to communicate or tell stories

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are handy tools for witches to use for so many magickal purposes. Carve one into a specific colored candle, charge the glyph and the candle to a particular use and viola; you have a powerful spell candle. Add protective glyphs in Holy Water to your vehicle and home to aid in protecting them. For that matter, use glyphs on the jars you collect your Moon Waters in to enhance the magick of the waters. Use glyphs in the corners of written spells to increase their potency.

As a witch, I feel that adding glyphs, and sigils to different magickal spell practices, merely adds another layer of power into the spell. So, for MJ, who requested a few more glyphs, here you go!

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Glyphs are handy tools for witches to use for so many magickal purposes. Carve one into a specific colored candle, charge the glyph and the candle to a particular use and viola; you have a powerful spell candle. Add protective glyphs in Holy Water to your vehicle and home to aid in protecting them.

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An empire is a group of people run by a king, emperor, or other government that rule over a piece of land.

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Astronomers are scientists that study space.

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Saturn is the planet you always drew in elementary school because without those rings, it's just a circle. But what is Saturn, anyway, and what makes it special to planetary scientists? Now is a good time to find out: On September 15, the scientists who operate the Cassini spacecraft-which they've used to study the gas giant for 13 years-are going to intentionally destroy Cassini by sending it on a crash course with Saturn. The data it will send back before it meets its fiery demise will be priceless.

Mental Floss is going to be inside mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, as the scientists send Cassini on its grand finale mission. We'll have a full dispatch for you. In anticipation, we spoke to Saturn experts to find out what you need to know about the planet before Cassini takes its final plunge.

1. SATURN BY THE NUMBERS.

At 75,000 miles across, Saturn is nearly 10 times larger than Earth and the second-largest planet in the solar system, behind its neighbor, Jupiter. It is called a gas giant, meaning it is really big and made mostly of gas: in this case, hydrogen and helium. The deeper you get into Saturn, the greater the pressure and heat. How bad could it be, you ask? Bad enough that hydrogen exists as a liquid metal near the planet's core. In other words, don't expect astronauts to plant flags down there anytime soon. One Saturn year lasts about 30 Earth years, and one Saturn day is, well ...

2. THE LENGTH OF A SATURNIAN DAY IS A MYSTERY.

The spacecraft Cassini has been operating in the Saturnian system for 13 years doing extraordinary science-and yet the length of a day on Saturn remains elusive. Is it 10 hours and 39 minutes, as suggested by data from Voyager 2 in 1981? Or is it 10 hours and 47 minutes, as Cassini data suggested when the spacecraft first arrived at Saturn in 2004? Or is it 10 hours 33 minutes, as later data suggested?

The problem is that Saturn keeps giving new answers. There are no continents spinning around for scientists to set a stopwatch to; cloud orbits are unreliable; and measurements of the planet's radio radiation and magnetic fields have proven equally frustrating. As Cassini completes its final orbits, it is collecting up-close Saturn data that might finally answer the question. No matter the number to be determined, 10 hours and change is a tremendous speed for a planet of Saturn's size to be spinning, and it affects even the planet's shape; its poles are flattened as a result of its rotation.

3. SATURN HAS SEASONS.

Visiting space aliens would never confuse Saturn with Earth, though the two planets do have one interesting shared characteristic: both are tilted to similar degrees relative to the equator of the Sun. Earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees; Saturn is tilted at 26.7 degrees. Axial tilt is the reason we experience seasons, and Saturn is no different (though the leaves there don't change color due to a pronounced lack of trees). Saturn experienced summer solstice four months ago, marking its maximum axial tilt toward the Sun and making it midsummer in Saturn's northern hemisphere. It will reach Autumn equinox in May 2025.

4. HERE'S MORE ABOUT CASSINI, NASA'S MOST AMBITIOUS PLANETARY MISSION EVER.

After 20 years in space-seven years en route to Saturn and 13 years in orbit around it-the Cassini spacecraft is nearly out of fuel for its thrusters. Rather than enter a permanent orbit around Saturn as an artificial satellite, or sent on an intercept course with Uranus, both risky endeavors, Cassini will burn up like a shooting star when it plunges into the depths of Saturn on September 15. For the past six months, Cassini has been taking daring dives through Saturn's rings in a series of 22 orbits, the last of which will send it on an impact course with the planet. As it speeds into the gas giant, it will return data on the composition of Saturn's atmosphere. Cassini's death mission will protect the moons Enceladus and Titan from contamination by Earth germs.

5. ENJOY TERRIBLE WEATHER? YOU'D LOVE LIFE ON SATURN.

"Saturn has these absolutely massive storms once every few decades," says Sarah Hörst, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University, "and we actually got to see one of them happen because we've been there so long." Scientists already knew about the storms from Earth-based observation, but close-up study made possible by Cassini gave new insights on how they work and what they do. "These massive storms actually pull up a lot of material from deeper in the atmosphere-stuff that we can't usually see or measure," she tells Mental Floss. This material consists of gases from deep within the planet's atmosphere. Saturn's storms cause dramatic temperature changes, and even have lightning. "If you were somehow managing to stand inside of Saturn's atmosphere, some of the storms would feel quite familiar, and some of these longer-lived storms, these vortexes, are somewhat related to a hurricane."

6. IT HAS A CORE, BUT DETAILS ABOUT IT ARE HAZY.

Saturn has a rocky core surrounded by liquid metallic hydrogen, though the finer details of the planet's interior remain elusive. At Jupiter, NASA's Juno mission is hard at work determining the nature of that planet's core. The 22 proximal orbits of Cassini's "grand finale" have a configuration similar to those of Juno, and scientists hope that data from these orbits can be used with Juno data to learn more about Saturn's interior. "The general picture that there's rocky stuff down there, probably metallic hydrogen, isn't really going to change," says Hörst. "The details of exactly how it looks and where its phase changes are-those types of things-will hopefully be worked out a bit more before Cassini ends."

7. YOU CAN SEE SATURN FROM YOUR BACKYARD.

When the skies are conducive to viewing, even a modest telescope can allow you to see Saturn. It will look just like you imagine: a ball surrounded by a distinctive ring structure. It will even "feel" three dimensional (because it is, of course) in a way that Jupiter or Mars will not. Your telescope might even allow you to spot Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Sky & Telescope offers a guide to help you see Saturn in all its glory.

8. ITS MOONS MIGHT BE YOUNGER THAN SOME DINOSAUR FOSSILS.

Earth's moon is about 4.5 billion years old. Saturn's moons are mere infants in comparison: possibly as young as 100 million years old. Matija Cuk, a research scientist at SETI, modeled the orbital evolution of the Saturn system, and found that the orbital shifts of the moons over time, and the gravitational influences of the moons over each other, suggest origins when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. "If calculations predict that something happened in the past and you don't see it, maybe it never happened," he tells Mental Floss. One scenario sees a different inner moon system whose orbits resonated and eventually crossed, causing the moons to collide. The current system of moons then assembled from the debris.

Those rings around Saturn might not be very old, either, and might be related to the young moons. "The rings might be pieces of broken up moons," he says. "You figure out how old the rings are and you can figure out the last time the moons were broken up and when some of them were put back together."

9. THERE'S A GOOD CHANCE THAT LIFE EXISTS ON THOSE MOONS.

Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, possesses a global saltwater ocean surrounded by an icy crust. That ocean is in direct contact with a rocky core. Saltwater touching rock is exciting because it allows for interesting chemistry-including the sort that might be conducive to life. Adding to the excitement are hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, spewing water, minerals, and nutrients heated by geothermal activity. Better yet, that ocean is being blasted into space through massive geysers. This means NASA can get to the water, sample it, and hopefully, find life.

Titan, another moon of Saturn, also possesses the right stuff for life-and not boring old liquid water life, either, but something wholly alien: a methane-based life form. Key to such life would be the presence of the molecule acrylonitrile, now known to exist on Titan. The European Space Agency landed the Huygens probe on Titan in 2005, and Cassini later discovered several massive liquid methane lakes on that world. The next step is to send a submarine there and get to work.

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10 Weird Planetary Phenomena Discovered by Amateur Astronomers

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Saturn is the planet you always drew in elementary school because without those rings, it's just a circle. But what is Saturn, anyway, and what makes it special to planetary scientists?

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A city-state is a type of a small independent country, it uses it's own Government.

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A city-state denotes a politically independent city whose territory also includes its dependent territories. This type of political structure was common in antiquity, as seen in the city-states of Carthage, Rome, and Athens. Italy's territory featured merchant city-states in the course of the Renaissance from Venice, Ancona, Florence, Naples, Pisa, Bari, to Lucca. City-states are not as numerous in the modern day, with Vatican City, Singapore, and Monaco considered as being the true definition of the term. City-states also go by the name micro-states, a term which is also used to denote other configurations of particularly small nations. A handful of other small states bear similarities to the structure of city-states and are thus regarded as modern city-states such as Malta, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Brunei. These territories each possess an urban settlement hosting a substantial proportion of the population although they have a number of distinct settlements in addition to a de facto capital city.

Ancient City-States

Numerous city-states prospered in medieval times in various parts of the world from Russia, Greece, Central Asia, Egypt, to the Swahili Coast. Rome is one of the notable example of these cities. It developed from a series of settlements surrounding a ford on the river Tiber. Italy's Latin tribe is credited with the formation of the city-state. The Roman Republic began around 509 BC, and it featured such democratic elements as a constitution, representative assemblies, Senate, and annually elected magistrates. The city expanded its mandate through conquest to include territories in North Africa, western Europe, the Mediterranean region, Eastern and Northern Europe, and Asia Minor. At the city's height in AD 117, it covered 5.0 square kilometers and had 50 to 90 million residents. Rome inspired numerous modern republics. Another medieval city-state was Tyre which was among the most prominent city-states in all of Phoenicia. Tyre was made up of two areas. The older part of the city developed on the mainland from c. 2750 BCE while the island complex grew as a trade center. The island's prosperity necessitated its heavy fortification. Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged the city for thirteen years and did not manage to breach its defenses. The city also attracted the attention of Alexander the Great. The inhabitants of Tyre were experts in the making of dye from the crushed shells of the Murex shellfish. The purple dye that was produced was highly prized in the medieval era. The city's alliance with Israel further facilitated its prosperity.

Italian City-States

Venice, Sienna, Florence, Lucca, and Genoa arose as the most notable Italian city-states from the 9th to the 15th century. Venice arose as a great maritime power and as a commerce hub for spice, silk, and grain. Venice also benefited from a lucrative banking sector, and it is regarded as the 1st proper international financial center. Genoa was another Mediterranean trading power, and the city's bankers lent money to monarchs such as those of Spain. Florence flourished in the 12th century through trading with foreign nations. Numerous palazzi and churches were built going into the 13th century which featured Gothic architecture. Florence also had a lucrative wool manufacturing industry. Lucca was renowned for its silk industry while Siena arose as a commercial center. These city-states implemented a republican form of government fashioned after medieval Rome and Greece. Several interlinked councils made significant decisions in the states while prominent adult men were chosen or elected to perform legislative or executive duties. The city-states did not, however, allow substantial political rights to the residents of their subject territories out of the capital city.

Decline Of The Medieval City-States

Several city-states had already lost their sovereignty in the 16th century. The Florentine Republic evolved into the Duchy of Tuscany in 1532 under the reign of the Medici family, while Sienna was conquered by Spain in 1555 and bought by Florence in 1557. The city-states were fewer and weaker by the 18th century. Venice struggled to retain its independence after it was engaged in a series succession wars with the Turks from 1645 to 1718. Napoleon Bonaparte managed to conquer Venice in 1797. The European city-states were major losers in the time between the Renaissance to the French Revolution as they could not afford the manpower and wealth to defend themselves against powerful monarchies.

Current City-States

Monaco

Monaco is among the world's current city-states. It lies in the French Riviera in the western part of Europe. Monaco sits on an area of 0.78 square miles and has an estimated 38,400 residents. Monaco has implemented a constitutional monarchy type of government. The House of Grimaldi has maintained rule over the territory despite several brief interruptions. The state's independence is guaranteed by the 1861 Franco-Monegasque Treaty, although its defense is in the hands of France. In 1993, Monaco was awarded full voting rights by the UN. The state also participates in some EU policies such as border control and customs even though it is not an EU member, although it has been a participant in the Council of Europe since 2004.

Singapore

Singapore is an Asian city-state whose territory features one primary island and an additional 62 islets. Its colonial history includes British occupation and Japanese occupation in the course of the WWII. Singapore joined other ex-British colonies to create Malaysia, but it detached itself two years later citing ideological differences and established itself as a sovereign country in 1965. Singapore faced initial challenges such as a hinterland and lack of natural resources, but its focus on external trade propelled its economy. Singapore's constitution provides for a representative democracy structure of politics. The country has in place a sophisticated and technological advanced military system to defend its sovereignty if the need arises.

Vatican City

Vatican City occupies an area of 44 hectares inside Rome. The city's establishment is credited to the 1929 Lateran Treaty negotiated between Italy and the Holy See. The figure in charge of the Roman Catholic Church assumes political power in the state, and the Pope is therefore at the center of the city's legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The highest state officials are Catholic clergy of different national origins. Vatican City has a unique economy as it relies on the sale of publications and postage stamps, the admission fees to museums, as well as the sale of tourist mementos.

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A city-state denotes a politically independent city whose territory also includes its dependent territories. This type of political structure was common in antiquity, as seen in the city-states of Carthage, Rome, and Athens. Italy's territory featured merchant city-states in the course of the Renaissance from Venice, Ancona, Florence, Naples, Pisa, Bari, to Lucca.

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Hieroglyphics are what ancient civilizations used as letters or as a writing system

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Learn about how Egyptian writing works and what it all represents, plus find out how to spell your name in hieroglyphics - cool!

Facts about hieroglyphics

Although hieroglyphics are Egyptian, the word hieroglyphics is Greek. "Hiero" means "holy" and "glyphics" means "marks" or "writings" - so the word means " holy writings ". The Egyptians believed there was great power in a name. If someone's name was remembered then he or she would survive in the afterlife. That's why pharaohs' names were written in hieroglyphics in their tombs!

What do the pictures mean?

Most of the pictures can stand for the object they represent, but usually they stand for sounds. In Egyptian, the owl stands for the sound "m". The Egyptian symbol for a mouth can mean mouth but it's usually read as the sound "r". You can't exactly match our alphabet to hieroglyphics, because they are two very different languages, but historians have come up with a simplified translation of our letters and Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Hieroglyphics can be pictures of living creatures, objects used in daily life or symbols. Some are easy to identify, some confusing and some impossible! If you look at the alphabet chart, you can easily spot the foot, the hand, the lion and the owl, but why are there two different kinds of snakes?

From A to Sh, the hieroglyphic symbols are:

Why don't you use the hieroglyphic chart above to see if you can write your own name?

For more about the Ancient Egyptians and their hieroglyphics, check out this cool clip...

Photos: Getty Images UK

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Facts about hieroglyphics | National Geographic Kids

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Learn about how Egyptian writing works and what it all represents, plus find out how to spell your name in hieroglyphics - cool! Although hieroglyphics are Egyptian, the word hieroglyphics is Greek. "Hiero" means "holy" and "glyphics" means "marks" or "writings" - so the word means " holy writings ".

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Civilizations are big groups of people that all live together in a society.

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Civilizations are intimately associated with additional characteristics such as centralization, the domestication of plant and animal species (including humans), specialization of labour, culturally-ingrained ideologies of progress, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming, and expansionism.

Historically, "a civilization" has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures. In this broad sense, a civilization contrasts with non-centralized tribal societies, including the cultures of nomadic pastoralists, Neolithic societies or hunter-gatherers; however, sometimes it also contrasts with the cultures found within civilizations themselves. Civilizations are organized densely-populated settlements divided into hierarchical social classes with a ruling elite and subordinate urban and rural populations, which engage in intensive agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. Civilization concentrates power, extending human control over the rest of nature, including over other human beings.

Civilization, as its etymology (see below) suggests, is a concept originally associated with towns and cities. The earliest emergence of civilizations is generally connected with the final stages of the Neolithic Revolution in West Asia, culminating in the relatively rapid process of urban revolution and state-formation, a political development associated with the appearance of a governing elite.

The English word civilization comes from the 16th-century French civilisé ("civilized"), from Latin civilis ("civil"), related to civis ("citizen") and civitas ("city"). The fundamental treatise is Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (1939), which traces social mores from medieval courtly society to the Early Modern period. In The Philosophy of Civilization (1923), Albert Schweitzer outlines two opinions: one purely material and the other material and ethical. He said that the world crisis was from humanity losing the ethical idea of civilization, "the sum total of all progress made by man in every sphere of action and from every point of view in so far as the progress helps towards the spiritual perfecting of individuals as the progress of all progress".

Related words like "civility" developed in the mid-16th century. The abstract noun "civilization", meaning "civilized condition", came in the 1760s, again from French. The first known use in French is in 1757, by Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and the first use in English is attributed to Adam Ferguson, who in his 1767 Essay on the History of Civil Society wrote, "Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood but the species itself from rudeness to civilisation". The word was therefore opposed to barbarism or rudeness, in the active pursuit of progress characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, during the French Revolution, "civilization" was used in the singular, never in the plural, and meant the progress of humanity as a whole. This is still the case in French. The use of "civilizations" as a countable noun was in occasional use in the 19th century, but has become much more common in the later 20th century, sometimes just meaning culture (itself in origin an uncountable noun, made countable in the context of ethnography). Only in this generalized sense does it become possible to speak of a "medieval civilization", which in Elias's sense would have been an oxymoron.

Already in the 18th century, civilization was not always seen as an improvement. One historically important distinction between culture and civilization is from the writings of Rousseau, particularly his work about education, . Here, civilization, being more rational and socially driven, is not fully in accord with human nature, and "human wholeness is achievable only through the recovery of or approximation to an original discursive or prerational natural unity" (see noble savage). From this, a new approach was developed, especially in Germany, first by Johann Gottfried Herder and later by philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. This sees cultures as natural organisms, not defined by "conscious, rational, deliberative acts", but a kind of pre-rational "folk spirit". Civilization, in contrast, though more rational and more successful in material progress, is unnatural and leads to "vices of social life" such as guile, hypocrisy, envy and avarice. In World War II, Leo Strauss, having fled Germany, argued in New York that this opinion of civilization was behind Nazism and German militarism and nihilism.

Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society. Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural traits. Andrew Nikiforuk argues that "civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities" and considers slavery to be a common feature of pre-modern civilizations.

All civilizations have depended on agriculture for subsistence, with the possible exception of some early civilizations in Peru which may have depended upon maritime resources.

The traditional "surplus model" postulates that cereal farming results in accumulated storage and a surplus of food, particularly when people use intensive agricultural techniques such as artificial fertilization, irrigation and crop rotation. It is possible but more difficult to accumulate horticultural production, and so civilizations based on horticultural gardening have been very rare. Grain surpluses have been especially important because grain can be stored for a long time.

A research from the Journal of Political Economy contradicts the surplus model. It postulates that horticultural gardening was more productive than cereal farming. However, only cereal farming produced civilization because of the appropriability of yearly harvest. Rural populations that could only grow cereals could be taxed allowing for a taxing elite and urban development. This also had a negative effect on rural population, increasing relative agricultural output per farmer. Farming efficiency created food surplus and sustained the food surplus through decreasing rural population growth in favour of urban growth. Suitability of highly productive roots and tubers was in fact a curse of plenty, which prevented the emergence of states and impeded economic development.

A surplus of food permits some people to do things besides producing food for a living: early civilizations included soldiers, artisans, priests and priestesses, and other people with specialized careers. A surplus of food results in a division of labour and a more diverse range of human activity, a defining trait of civilizations. However, in some places hunter-gatherers have had access to food surpluses, such as among some of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest and perhaps during the Mesolithic Natufian culture. It is possible that food surpluses and relatively large scale social organization and division of labour predates plant and animal domestication.

Civilizations have distinctly different settlement patterns from other societies. The word "civilization" is sometimes simply defined as "' living in cities'". Non-farmers tend to gather in cities to work and to trade.

Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a market system, or receive food through the levy of tribute, redistributive taxation, tariffs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early human cultures functioned through a gift economy supplemented by limited barter systems. By the early Iron Age, contemporary civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for increasingly complex transactions. In a village, the potter makes a pot for the brewer and the brewer compensates the potter by giving him a certain amount of beer. In a city, the potter may need a new roof, the roofer may need new shoes, the cobbler may need new horseshoes, the blacksmith may need a new coat and the tanner may need a new pot. These people may not be personally acquainted with one another and their needs may not occur all at the same time. A monetary system is a way of organizing these obligations to ensure that they are fulfilled. From the days of the earliest monetarized civilizations, monopolistic controls of monetary systems have benefited the social and political elites.

The transition from simpler to more complex economies does not necessarily mean an improvement in the living standards of the populace. For example, although the Middle Ages is often portrayed as an era of decline from the Roman Empire, studies have shown that the average stature of males in the Middle Ages (c. 500 to 1500 CE) was greater than it was for males during the preceding Roman Empire and the succeeding Early Modern Period (c. 1500 to 1800 CE). Also, the Plains Indians of North America in the 19th century were taller than their "civilized" American and European counterparts. The average stature of a population is a good measurement of the adequacy of its access to necessities, especially food, and its freedom from disease.

Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and "appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state". Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, the writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other. However, writing is not always necessary for civilization, as shown by the Inca civilization of the Andes, which did not use writing at all but except for a complex recording system consisting of knotted strings of different lengths and colors: the " Quipus", and still functioned as a civilized society.

Aided by their division of labour and central government planning, civilizations have developed many other diverse cultural traits. These include organized religion, development in the arts, and countless new advances in science and technology.

Throughout history, successful civilizations have spread, taking over more and more territory, and assimilating more and more previously-uncivilized people. Nevertheless, some tribes or people remain uncivilized even to this day. These cultures are called by some " primitive", a term that is regarded by others as pejorative. "Primitive" implies in some way that a culture is "first" (Latin = primus), that it has not changed since the dawn of humanity, though this has been demonstrated not to be true. Specifically, as all of today's cultures are contemporaries, today's so-called primitive cultures are in no way antecedent to those we consider civilized. Anthropologists today use the term " non-literate" to describe these peoples.

Civilization has been spread by colonization, invasion, religious conversion, the extension of bureaucratic control and trade, and by introducing agriculture and writing to non-literate peoples. Some non-civilized people may willingly adapt to civilized behaviour. But civilization is also spread by the technical, material and social dominance that civilization engenders.

Assessments of what level of civilization a polity has reached are based on comparisons of the relative importance of agricultural as opposed to trading or manufacturing capacities, the territorial extensions of its power, the complexity of its division of labour, and the carrying capacity of its urban centres. Secondary elements include a developed transportation system, writing, standardized measurement, currency, contractual and tort-based legal systems, art, architecture, mathematics, scientific understanding, metallurgy, political structures, and organized religion.

Traditionally, polities that managed to achieve notable military, ideological and economic power defined themselves as "civilized" as opposed to other societies or human groupings outside their sphere of influence - calling the latter barbarians, savages, and primitives.

"Civilization" can also refer to the culture of a complex society, not just the society itself. Every society, civilization or not, has a specific set of ideas and customs, and a certain set of manufactures and arts that make it unique. Civilizations tend to develop intricate cultures, including a state-based decision making apparatus, a literature, professional art, architecture, organized religion and complex customs of education, coercion and control associated with maintaining the elite.

The intricate culture associated with civilization has a tendency to spread to and influence other cultures, sometimes assimilating them into the civilization (a classic example being Chinese civilization and its influence on nearby civilizations such as Korea, Japan and Vietnam). Many civilizations are actually large cultural spheres containing many nations and regions. The civilization in which someone lives is that person's broadest cultural identity.

It is precisely the protection of this cultural identity that is becoming increasingly important nationally and internationally. According to international law, the United Nations and UNESCO try to set up and enforce relevant rules. The aim is to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity and also the cultural identity, especially in the case of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg, President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is often the opponent's cultural identity, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to destroy the particularly sensitive cultural memory (museums, archives, monuments, etc.), the grown cultural diversity, and the economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or community.

Many historians have focused on these broad cultural spheres and have treated civilizations as discrete units. Early twentieth-century philosopher Oswald Spengler, uses the German word Kultur, "culture", for what many call a "civilization". Spengler believed a civilization's coherence is based on a single primary cultural symbol. Cultures experience cycles of birth, life, decline, and death, often supplanted by a potent new culture, formed around a compelling new cultural symbol. Spengler states civilization is the beginning of the decline of a culture as "the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable".

This "unified culture" concept of civilization also influenced the theories of historian Arnold J. Toynbee in the mid-twentieth century. Toynbee explored civilization processes in his multi-volume A Study of History, which traced the rise and, in most cases, the decline of 21 civilizations and five "arrested civilizations". Civilizations generally declined and fell, according to Toynbee, because of the failure of a "creative minority", through moral or religious decline, to meet some important challenge, rather than mere economic or environmental causes.

Samuel P. Huntington defines civilization as "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species". Huntington's theories about civilizations are discussed below.

Another group of theorists, making use of systems theory, looks at a civilization as a complex system, i.e., a framework by which a group of objects can be analysed that work in concert to produce some result. Civilizations can be seen as networks of cities that emerge from pre-urban cultures and are defined by the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social and cultural interactions among them. Any organization is a complex social system and a civilization is a large organization. Systems theory helps guard against superficial and misleading analogies in the study and description of civilizations.

Systems theorists look at many types of relations between cities, including economic relations, cultural exchanges and political/diplomatic/military relations. These spheres often occur on different scales. For example, trade networks were, until the nineteenth century, much larger than either cultural spheres or political spheres. Extensive trade routes, including the Silk Road through Central Asia and Indian Ocean sea routes linking the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, India and China, were well established 2000 years ago when these civilizations scarcely shared any political, diplomatic, military, or cultural relations. The first evidence of such long-distance trade is in the ancient world. During the Uruk period, Guillermo Algaze has argued that trade relations connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran and Afghanistan. Resin found later in the Royal Cemetery at Ur is suggested was traded northwards from Mozambique.

Many theorists argue that the entire world has already become integrated into a single " world system", a process known as globalization. Different civilizations and societies all over the globe are economically, politically, and even culturally interdependent in many ways. There is debate over when this integration began, and what sort of integration - cultural, technological, economic, political, or military-diplomatic - is the key indicator in determining the extent of a civilization. David Wilkinson has proposed that economic and military-diplomatic integration of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations resulted in the creation of what he calls the "Central Civilization" around 1500 BCE. Central Civilization later expanded to include the entire Middle East and Europe, and then expanded to a global scale with European colonization, integrating the Americas, Australia, China and Japan by the nineteenth century. According to Wilkinson, civilizations can be culturally heterogeneous, like the Central Civilization, or homogeneous, like the Japanese civilization. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" might be characterized by Wilkinson as a clash of cultural spheres within a single global civilization. Others point to the Crusading movement as the first step in globalization. The more conventional viewpoint is that networks of societies have expanded and shrunk since ancient times, and that the current globalized economy and culture is a product of recent European colonialism.[citation needed ]

The notion of world history as a succession of "civilizations" is an entirely modern one. In the European Age of Discovery, emerging Modernity was put into stark contrast with the Neolithic and Mesolithic stage of the cultures of many of the peoples they encountered. The term "civilization" as it is now most commonly understood, a complex state with centralization, social stratification and specialization of labour, corresponds to early empires that arise in the Fertile Crescent in the Early Bronze Age, around roughly 3000 BC. Gordon Childe defined the emergence of civilization as the result of two successive revolutions: the Neolithic Revolution, triggering the development of settled communities, and the Urban Revolution.

Urban Revolution

At first, the Neolithic was associated with shifting subsistence cultivation, where continuous farming led to the depletion of soil fertility resulting in the requirement to cultivate fields further and further removed from the settlement, eventually compelling the settlement itself to move. In major semi-arid river valleys, annual flooding renewed soil fertility every year, with the result that population densities could rise significantly. This encouraged a secondary products revolution in which people used domesticated animals not just for meat, but also for milk, wool, manure and pulling ploughs and carts - a development that spread through the Eurasian Oecumene.[definition needed ]

The earlier neolithic technology and lifestyle were established first in Western Asia (for example at Göbekli Tepe, from about 9,130 BCE), and later in the Yellow River and Yangtze basins in China (for example the Peiligang and Pengtoushan cultures), and later spread. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE, with civilizations developing from 7,400 years ago. This area has been identified as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the building of the earliest cities and the development of the written cursive script". Similar pre-civilized "neolithic revolutions" also began independently from 7,000 BCE in northwestern South America (the Norte Chico civilization) and Mesoamerica.

The 8.2 Kiloyear Arid Event and the 5.9 Kiloyear Interpluvial saw the drying out of semiarid regions and a major spread of deserts. This climate change shifted the cost-benefit ratio of endemic violence between communities, which saw the abandonment of unwalled village communities and the appearance of walled cities, associated with the first civilizations.

This " urban revolution" marked the beginning of the accumulation of transferable surpluses, which helped economies and cities develop. It was associated with the state monopoly of violence, the appearance of a soldier class and endemic warfare, the rapid development of hierarchies, and the appearance of human sacrifice.

The civilized urban revolution in turn was dependent upon the development of sedentism, the domestication of grains, plants and animals, the permanence of settlements and development of lifestyles that facilitated economies of scale and accumulation of surplus production by certain social sectors. The transition from complex cultures to civilizations, while still disputed, seems to be associated with the development of state structures, in which power was further monopolized by an elite ruling class who practiced human sacrifice.

Towards the end of the Neolithic period, various elitist Chalcolithic civilizations began to rise in various "cradles" from around 3600 BCE beginning with Mesopotamia, expanding into large-scale empires in the course of the Bronze Age ( Akkadian Empire, Old Kingdom of Egypt, Neo-Sumerian Empire, Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire, Hittite Empire, and to some degree the territorial expansions of the Elamites, Hurrians, Amorites and Ebla).

A later development took place independently in the Pre-Columbian Americas. Urbanization in the Norte Chico civilization in coastal Peru emerged about 3200 BCE; the oldest known Mayan city, located in Guatemala, dates to about 750 BCE. and Teotihuacan in Mexico was one of the largest cities in the world in 350 CE with a population of about 125,000.

The Bronze Age collapse was followed by the Iron Age around 1200 BCE, during which a number of new civilizations emerged, culminating in a period from the 8th to the 3rd century BCE which Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age, presented as a critical transitional phase leading to classical civilization.

A major technological and cultural transition to modernity began approximately 1500 CE in Western Europe, and from this beginning new approaches to science and law spread rapidly around the world, incorporating earlier cultures into the technological and industrial society of the present.

Civilizations are traditionally understood as ending in one of two ways; either through incorporation into another expanding civilization (e.g. As Ancient Egypt was incorporated into Hellenistic Greek, and subsequently Roman civilizations), or by collapsing and reverting to a simpler form of living, as happens in so-called Dark Ages.

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization. Some focus on historical examples, and others on general theory.

Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddimah influenced theories of the analysis, growth and decline of the Islamic civilization.[64] He suggested repeated invasions from nomadic peoples limited development and led to social collapse.

Edward Gibbon's work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a well-known and detailed analysis of the fall of Roman civilization. Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 CE. For Gibbon, "The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long".[65]

Theodor Mommsen in his History of Rome suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis", "growth", "senescence", "collapse" and "decay".

Oswald Spengler, in his Decline of the West rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations". Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations, which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism.

Arnold J. Toynbee in his A Study of History suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariats.

Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies suggested that there were diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd century CE.

Jared Diamond in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures: environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion; climate change; dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources; increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion; and societal responses to internal and environmental problems.

Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing population growth leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121-127; Andrey Korotayev et al. Secular Cycles and Millennial Trends. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, 2006).

Peter Heather argues in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians[66] that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but because centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of the Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang dynasties of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate and others.

Bryan Ward-Perkins, in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization,[67] argues from mostly archaeological evidence that the collapse of Roman civilization in western Europe had deleterious impacts on the living standards of the population, unlike some historians who downplay this. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing for the elite disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar impacts have been postulated for the Dark Age after the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere.

Arthur Demarest argues in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization,[68] using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archeology, paleoecology, and epigraphy, that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms, which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.

Jeffrey A. McNeely has recently suggested that "a review of historical evidence shows that past civilizations have tended to over-exploit their forests, and that such abuse of important resources has been a significant factor in the decline of the over-exploiting society".[69]

Thomas Homer-Dixon in The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, where he considers that the fall in the energy return on investments. The energy expended to energy yield ratio is central to limiting the survival of civilizations. The degree of social complexity is associated strongly, he suggests, with the amount of disposable energy environmental, economic and technological systems allow. When this amount decreases civilizations either have to access new energy sources or they will collapse.

Feliks Koneczny in his work "On the Plurality of Civilizations" calls his study the science on civilizations. He asserts that civilizations fall not because they must or there exist some cyclical or a "biological" life span and that there stil exist two ancient civilizations - Brahmin-Hindu and Chinese - which are not ready to fall any time soon. Koneczny claimed that civilizations cannot be mixed into hybrids, an inferior civilization when given equal rights within a highly developed civilization will overcome it. One of Koneczny's claims in his study on civilizations is that "a person cannot be civilized in two or more ways" without falling into what he calls an "abcivilized state" (as in abnormal). He also stated that when two or more civilizations exist next to one another and as long as they are vital, they will be in an existential combat imposing its own "method of organizing social life" upon the other.[70] Absorbing alien "method of organizing social life" that is civilization and giving it equal rights yields a process of decay and decomposition.

Political scientist Samuel Huntington has argued that the defining characteristic of the 21st century will be a clash of civilizations. According to Huntington, conflicts between civilizations will supplant the conflicts between nation-states and ideologies that characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. These views have been strongly challenged by others like Edward Said, Muhammed Asadi and Amartya Sen. Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have argued that the "true clash of civilizations" between the Muslim world and the West is caused by the Muslim rejection of the West's more liberal sexual values, rather than a difference in political ideology, although they note that this lack of tolerance is likely to lead to an eventual rejection of (true) democracy. In Identity and Violence Sen questions if people should be divided along the lines of a supposed "civilization", defined by religion and culture only. He argues that this ignores the many others identities that make up people and leads to a focus on differences.

Cultural Historian Morris Berman suggests in Dark Ages America: the End of Empire that in the corporate consumerist United States, the very factors that once propelled it to greatness―extreme individualism, territorial and economic expansion, and the pursuit of material wealth―have pushed the United States across a critical threshold where collapse is inevitable. Politically associated with over-reach, and as a result of the environmental exhaustion and polarization of wealth between rich and poor, he concludes the current system is fast arriving at a situation where continuation of the existing system saddled with huge deficits and a hollowed-out economy is physically, socially, economically and politically impossible. Although developed in much more depth, Berman's thesis is similar in some ways to that of Urban Planner, Jane Jacobs who argues that the five pillars of United States culture are in serious decay: community and family; higher education; the effective practice of science; taxation and government; and the self-regulation of the learned professions. The corrosion of these pillars, Jacobs argues, is linked to societal ills such as environmental crisis, racism and the growing gulf between rich and poor.

Cultural critic and author Derrick Jensen argues that modern civilization is directed towards the domination of the environment and humanity itself in an intrinsically harmful, unsustainable, and self-destructive fashion. Defending his definition both linguistically and historically, he defines civilization as "a culture... that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities", with "cities" defined as "people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life". This need for civilizations to import ever more resources, he argues, stems from their over-exploitation and diminution of their own local resources. Therefore, civilizations inherently adopt imperialist and expansionist policies and, to maintain these, highly militarized, hierarchically structured, and coercion-based cultures and lifestyles.

The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations based on their level of technological advancement, specifically measured by the amount of energy a civilization is able to harness. The scale is only hypothetical, but it puts energy consumption in a cosmic perspective. The Kardashev scale makes provisions for civilizations far more technologically advanced than any currently known to exist.

The Persepolis in Iran: Pictures of the Gate of All Nations, the main entrance for all representatives of other nations and states. Persepolis appears to have been a grand ceremonial complex, that it was especially used for celebrating Nowruz, the Persian New Year, in 515 BC.

The Roman Forum in Rome, Italy, the political, economic, cultural and religious center of the Ancient Rome civilization, during the Republic and later Empire, its ruins still visible today in modern-day Rome.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. An architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization. Its influence, both architecturally and liturgically, was widespread and enduring in the Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity, and Ottoman architecture. Represents the legacy of the Byzantine Empire one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military force in Europe, noted for its art, architecture, science, medicine, and law.

The current scientific consensus is that human beings are the only animal species with the cognitive ability to create civilizations that has emerged on Earth. A recent thought experiment, the silurian hypothesis, however, considers whether it would "be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geological record" given the paucity of geological information about eras before the quaternary.

Astronomers speculate about the existence of communicating intelligent civilizations within and beyond the Milky Way galaxy, usually using variants of the Drake equation. They also conduct searches for such intelligences - such as for technological traces, called " technosignatures". The proposed proto-scientific field " xenoarchaeology" is concerned with the study of artifact remains of non-human civilizations to reconstruct and interpret past lives of alien societies if such get discovered and confirmed scientifically.

Brinton, Crane; et al. (1984). A History of Civilization: Prehistory to 1715 (6th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-389866-8.

Collcutt, Martin; Marius Jansen; Isao Kumakura (1988). Cultural Atlas of Japan. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-8160-1927-4.

J. Currie Elles (1908), The influence of commerce on civilization: the Joseph Fisher lecture on commerce delivered at the University of Adelaide by J. Currie Elles esq., April 23rd, 1908 (1st ed.), Adelaide: W. K. Thomas & Co., Wikidata Q106369892

Ferrill, Arther (1985). The Origins of War: From the Stone Age to Alexander the Great. New York: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-25093-8.

Fuller, J.F.C. (1954-57). A Military History of the Western World. 3 vols. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

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Hicks, Jim (1975). The Persians. New York: Time-Life Books.

Korotayev, Andrey, World Religions and Social Evolution of the Old World Oikumene Civilizations: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7734-6310-0

Kradin, Nikolay. Archaeological Criteria of Civilization. Social Evolution & History, Vol. 5, No 1 (2006): 89-108. ISSN 1681-4363.

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Sandall, Roger (2001). The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. ISBN 978-0-8133-3863-7.

Sansom, George (1958). A History of Japan: To 1334. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0523-3.

Southworth, John Van Duyn (1968). The Ancient Fleets: The Story of Naval Warfare Under Oars, 2600 B.C.-1597 A.D. New York: Twayne.

Yurdusev, A. Nuri (2003). International Relations and the Philosophy of History. doi:10.1057/9781403938404. ISBN 978-1-349-40304-2.

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Civilizations are intimately associated with additional characteristics such as centralization, the domestication of plant and animal species (including humans), specialization of labour, culturally-ingrained ideologies of progress, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon farming, and expansionism. Historically, "a civilization" has often been understood as a larger and "more advanced" culture, in implied contrast to smaller, supposedly less advanced cultures.

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Mesoamerica was a cultural region spanding through America, Mexico, and South America.