The Endurance and Evolution of Ancient Civilizations: Insights for Today's Challenges
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54183/jssr.v3i4.393Keywords:
Ancient Civilizations, Rise and Fall, Factors Contributing, Challenges Faced, Parallels with Contemporary Societies, Environmental SustainabilityAbstract
The article explains the complexities of ancient history, exploring the driving forces behind the rise and fall of ancient civilizations. It discusses key characteristics and factors contributing to their rise, such as geographical advantages, agricultural surplus, technological innovations, social organization, trade networks, strategic location, religious and ideological factors, military strength, intellectual and cultural achievements, and environmental adaptation. The article also presents case studies of notable ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Indus Valley Civilization, and China. Furthermore, it highlights challenges faced by ancient civilizations, including environmental factors, resource scarcity, climate change, political instability, economic pressures, health epidemics, cultural encounters, technological limitations, environmental degradation, and social inequality. Lessons learned from the decline and fall of ancient civilizations emphasize environmental sustainability, political stability and governance, economic resilience and diversification, social cohesion, and inclusivity, adaptability and innovation, respect for the rule of law and human rights, and learning from history. Parallels with contemporary societies are drawn to provide insights into addressing current challenges related to environmental sustainability, political stability and governance, economic resilience and diversification, social cohesion and inclusivity, adaptability and innovation, and respect for the rule of law and human rights.
References
Allardyce, G. (1982). The rise and fall of the Western civilization course. The American Historical Review, 87(3), 695. https://doi.org/10.2307/1864161
Butzer, K. W. (2012). Collapse, environment, and society. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(10), 3632-3639. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1114845109
Carrott, R. G. (1978). The Egyptian Revival: Its Sources, Monuments, and Meaning, 1808-1858. Univ of California Press.
Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1989). What Is Civilization?: And Other Essays. SteinerBooks.
Freeman, C. (2014). Egypt, Greece, and Rome: civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean. Oxford University Press, USA.
Heckel, W. (2008). The conquests of Alexander the Great. Cambridge: Cambridge.
Khazanov, A. M. (1978). Characteristic features of nomadic communities in the Eurasian steppes. The Nomadic Alternative, 119-126. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110810233.119
Lee, R. D. (2018). Religion and politics in the Middle East: Identity, ideology, institutions, and attitudes. Routledge
Liu, X. (2010). The Silk Road in world history. Oxford University Press.
Rose, D., & Allen, R. (2018). Ancient Civilizations of the World. Scientific e-Resources.
Sharma, S., & Pahuja, D. K. (2017). Five Great Civilizations of the Ancient World. Educreation Publishing.
Tellier, L. (2019). From the beginnings of agriculture and urbanization to the first Urbexplosions. Urban World History, 15-80. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24842-0_2
Trigger, B. G. (1993). Early civilizations: Ancient Egypt in context. American Univ in Cairo Press.
Verner, M. (2007). The pyramids: the mystery, culture, and science of Egypt's great monuments. Open Road+ Grove/Atlantic.
Ziman, J. M., & Ziman, J. (Eds.). (2003). Technological innovation as an evolutionary process. Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Copyright in the Journal of Social Sciences Review is retained by the author(s). Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
SSR's Editorial Board shares the vision of providing free access to information, education, and science for everyone, thus promoting its content through an OPEN ACCESS POLICY, fulfilling the DOAJ definition of open access. The JSSR adheres to an Open Access and Copyright Licensing Policy based on the belief that making research freely accessible to the public promotes greater global knowledge sharing.
The JSSR uses the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. The authors who apply and publish in JSSR consent to abide by the copyright policy set out in the Creative Commons 4.0 license (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license).
- Copyright in the Journal of Social Sciences Review is retained by the author(s).
- Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
While "By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself."
