My bright idea: Civilisation is still worth striving for

Archaeologist and historian Richard Miles believes our quest for the perfect community is as relevant today as it was in 4500BC
ancient worlds
Richard Miles in Baalbek, Lebanon. Photograph: BBC BBC/PR




Civilisation is a word we only really see nowadays in inverted commas, but it's a useful concept when thinking about history. "Culture" has superseded it in many contexts, but that's such a bloated concept – we've given it so many meanings that it doesn't mean anything much anymore.

So how do you define civilisation?

Civilisation as a term suggests human agency. Things don't come together organically. There are winners and losers – and human will created the world we live in. It is the way in which people have articulated how and why they wanted to live in communities. It's about how we imagine the perfect community. And in terms of western civilisation, it can't be separated from the idea of the city. I think the most ambitious thing humans have ever done is deciding to live together with people whom they didn't know in cities. It's really difficult to build a community, to learn to celebrate difference and to live harmoniously together, and we fail all the time.

The first cities appeared in Mesopotamia in Iraq around 4500BC. Why there?

If you look at Mesopotamia, you've got two big rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, running through it, and the surrounding land isn't particularly fertile, but it could be. You've got to harness the power of the river by building irrigation canals, for instance – but you can't do that on an ad hoc basis, so it made sense for people to work together for mutual gain.

People there were very aware of the precariousness of life. There's an idea that as organised religion develops, outside of civilisation and order is nothing but watery chaos.

What is the role of religion here?


Do we also see the emergence of bureaucracy here?

Writing certainly develops as an elite initiative at this time. It helps them to harness the workforce – it's a way of communicating with the gods; and it's a way for the elites to list what you have, and what they have. As well as liberating you from the everyday worries of being on your own and working your patch of land, the city also subjugates and imprisons you. This is the pay-off, the paradox.

How well can you get inside the mindset of someone from that period?

If you are looking at fine buildings or the literature of the period, you have to be aware that you are only dealing with the mindset of the elite. But archaeology is going to give you some answers. It often acts as a parallel narrative to history: if you start digging with a textbook in your hand, you are soon going to get confused. You have to be comfortable with the idea that there are many different versions of history.

For example, when you're excavating in Carthage, as I have done, you suddenly come across this black tide mark – and that is the destruction layer of the city: 146BC. But inside it has lots of bits of broken pottery. What can that tell you? It can tell you what sort of crockery was in vogue in Carthage in 146BC, and if you know where it comes from, it also tells you who's trading with whom.

Do I know what a peasant on a farm or temple-owned property was thinking in Mesopotamia 4000BC? In Iraq, I've excavated these bevel- rimmed bowls, which archaeologists have found in their thousands. The fact there are so many, and that they appear at the same time, and that they look a bit like ration bowls – that suggests a uniformity, that there's a central authority coming into play, and that people are being forced into particular ways of thinking and doing things.

But in terms of their world view? No. I don't think you can ever get to that.

When we think of western civilisation we think of the ancient Greeks and Romans, but was their contribution so clear-cut?

One of the problems with the concept is that it is pegged as a very imperialistic view of the world in which the Greeks and the Romans were the engines of civilisation. Well, they were important, but these ideas didn't just develop from them. There's a more interesting story involving the Mediterranean and the near east.

You can see the connections between different civilisations formed from trade. The Babylonians were around at the same time as the Greeks, and when they traded, they didn't just take cargo with them, but people and ideas. Boat technology; interest-bearing loans; and, most importantly, the alphabet. The Greek alphabet is derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which comes from the near east.

But why are the Greeks so amazing? Because they took other people's ideas and made them better, as with the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet was a bit like text language – all consonants. So the Greeks take the alphabet, add vowel sounds and make it expressive, and within 100 years you get the Iliad.

Between the heyday of cities such as Uruk and the rise of the Greeks and Romans, isn't there what you can call a dark age?

The bronze age is a connected world. But it can't sustain itself; it's too rigid, elitist and top-heavy – and civilisation is a bit like a flickering flame. It almost goes out, but in certain places it keeps going and it will spread out again.


Civilisation is like a leap of faith, it's not a godlike exercise in improvement. But there is something in that old-fashioned concept. We shouldn't kid ourselves that we don't think certain advancements are better than others. Within reason, and without being racist or imperialist, as a historian you should make those value judgments, but you need to then back them up.

Can we see in the hordes who travelled to Uruk the same pattern of migration to urban areas in search of a better life that we see in the developing world today? And by that token, do the teeming slums of Mumbai or Lagos represent civilisation?

Yes, they do; and they are imagining the best ways to live together as much as a group of people in Manhattan. And this is something we should celebrate rather than shy away from.