through ages of unrecorded experiment and experience, and followed by
millions during the period of written history. It is also the way of
life that the West has been trying to impose upon the entire human
family since European empires launched their crusade to westernize,
modernize and civilize the planet Earth.

A third approach would regard civilization as an evolving life style,
conceived before the earliest days of recorded human history and matured
through the series of experiments marking the development of
civilization as we have known it during the five centuries from 1450 to
1975.

Thinking in terms of this age-old experience, with six or more thousand
years of social history as a background, it is possible to give a fairly
exact meaning to the word "civilization" as it has been lived and is
being lived by the present-day West. It is also possible to understand
the history of previous civilizations in cycle after cycle of their
rise, their development, decline and extinction. At the same time it
will enable the reader to recognize the relationship (and difference)
between the words "culture" and "civilization".

Human culture is the sum total of ideas, relationships, artifacts,
institutions, purposes and ideals currently functioning in any
community. Three elements are present in each human society: man, nature
and the social structure. Human culture at any point in its history is
the social structure: the aggregate of existing culture traits, the
products of man's ingenuity, inventiveness and experimentation, set in
their natural environment.

Civilization is a level of culture built upon foundations laid down