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
separate sovereign units are coordinated, consolidated, unified and
universalized. The result is an aggregate of parts, differing in many