man's "sixth" sense.

6. It has made possible an unprecedented increase in the
human population of the planet.

7. It has raised its potential for destruction far above and
beyond its potential for production and construction.

8. It has brought together, classified and indexed the ideas,
materials, techniques and generalizations which made possible
this study of civilization, its appearances, disappearances
and reappearances.

9. Europeans have carried the burdens of western civilization
and inherited its disintegrative consequences for so long a
period that the fate of western civilization and the fate
of present day Europe are closely interwoven.
Western civilization seems to have reached and passed the
zenith of its lifecycle without achieving the political integration,
the stability or the unified authority attained by the Romans and
the Egyptians at the high points in their lifecycles.

CHAPTER FIVE

FEATURES COMMON TO CIVILIZATIONS

Each civilization that has left legible records or significant
traditions during the past five or six thousand years has made
distinctive contributions that modified the culture pattern of its
predecessors and its contemporaries. At the same time all of the
civilizations have had certain common features that are the
characteristic aspects which justify the general definition of
civilization presented in the Introduction to this study.

Civilization is the most comprehensive, extensive and inclusive life
pattern achieved by terrestrial humanity. Starting locally and following
the three basic principles of urbanization, expansion and exploitation,
each civilization has charted a course that led from tentative local
beginnings through a cycle of growth, maturity, decline, decay and
dissolution.

The civilizing process is essentially collective, subordinating the
interests of each part to the interests of the whole, while allowing
sufficient home rule to enable each part to have the political, economic
and cultural advantages enjoyed by the other parts, always excepting the
privileged position occupied by the civilization's dominant empire and
its nucleus.

Necessarily a civilization is composed of more or less disparate
segments, each one (before its inclusion in the collective whole)
maintaining a large measure of sovereign independence. Utilizing
advanced techniques of communication, exchange, and transportation, the