Lesson 5

CIVILIZATION
We will try to define the notion “civilization” and to establish its essential features.
1. Brain storming: What associations does the word “civilization” give rise to?
2. What features of civilization does Kenneth Clark point out in the program “The Skin of Our
Teeth”? Account for their importance. (Watch the BBC Series “Civilization- in full, Civilization: A
Personal View by Kenneth Clark) [You can easily find it on the Internet]
3. Read the given pieces of information and offer your own definition of civilization taking into
account the features mentioned in task 2:
 A civilized society is the one which worked out a solution to the problems of living in a relatively
permanent community at a level of technological and social development above that of the hunting
band, the pastoral tribe, with a capacity for storing information in the form of written documents.
 Civilization is something artificial and man-made, the results of making tools of increasing
complexity in response to the enlarging concepts of the community life.
 The terms civilization and culture are used as synonyms. It denotes degrees or grades of the same
thing. Civilization carries an overtone of high development of a society, the term culture is applicable
alike to high and low products of society.
 Civilization means bringing out of barbarism, enlightenment, refinement and education.
 “I had no clear idea what "civilization" meant, but thought it was preferable to barbarism, and
fancied that this was the moment to say so.” (Clark on the genesis of Civilization)
4. Join one of these bits of dialogue with an utterance of your own, detailed enough to be well-
grounded:
a) – I think putting people in the world is a dirty trick... A tiny little place that got side-tracked in space
and began to fill up with terrible unclean animals in clothes.
– Those animals have created several magnificent civilizations and right now they're creating another
one. It's a privilege to participate!
– (the third speaker – YOU)
b) – Archaeology is a science of rubbish! We don't need any knowledge of ancient civilizations. It’s
concerned with the rubbish of the past, - the pots and pans and tools and weapons, the houses and
temples of people long ago dead!
– (YOUR CUE)
5. Comment on the statement:
“However complex and solid a civilization may seem, it is actually quite fragile and can be destroyed.”
6. If you were to draw a picture of “civilization”, what would you depict [изображать]?
7. Render the following extract from “The Skin of our Teeth” into good Russian:
The history of civilization isn’t the history of art – far from it. Great works of art can be produced in
barbarous societies – in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar
concentration and vitality. At some time in the ninth century one could have looked down the Seine and seen
the prow of a Viking ship coming up the river. Looked at today in the British Museum it is a powerful work
of art; but to the mother of a family trying to settle down in her little hut, it would have seemed less
agreeable – as menacing to her civilization as the periscope of a nuclear submarine.
An even more extreme example is an African mask. Most people, nowadays, would find it more moving
than the head of the Apollo of the Belvedere. Yet for four hundred years after it was discovered the Apollo
was the most admirable piece of sculpture in the world. It was Napoleon’s greatest boast to have looted it
from Vatican. Whatever its merits as a work of art, I don’t think there is any doubt that the Apollo embodies
a higher state of civilization than the mask. They both represent spirits, messengers from another world –
that is to say, from a world of our own imagining. To the Negro imagination it is a world of fear and
darkness, ready to inflict horrible punishment for the smallest infringement of a taboo. To the Hellenistic
imagination it is a world of light and confidence, in which the gods are like ourselves, only more beautiful,
and descent to earth in order to teach men reason and the laws of harmony.
There was plenty of superstition and cruelty in the Graeco-Roman world. But, all the same, the contrast
between these images means something. It means that at certain epochs man has felt conscious of something
about himself – body and spirit – which was outside the day-to-day struggle for existence and the night-to-
night struggle with fear; he has felt the need to develop these qualities of thought and feeling so that they
might approach as nearly as possible to an ideal of perfection – reason, justice, physical beauty, all of them
in equilibrium. He has managed to satisfy this need in various ways – through myths, through dance and
song, through systems of philosophy and through the order that he has imposed on the visible world. The
children of his imagination are also the expressions of an ideal.