CCD HISTORY 101 - History of Western Civilization 1
What pops into your head when you hear the term Civilized?
Cultured, refined, educated, advanced. These terms bring to mind their opposites Uncultured, boorish, ignorant, primitive.
Civilization is a tricky term because, like the word "culture," it can be used in different ways, some of which imply that uncivilized people (like "uncultured" ones) are inferior. Rather than run the risk of appearing pejorative, anthropologists today often substitute the term "complex society." This, however, isn't much of an improvement, since it implies that the nonurbanized societies are simple, which they aren't. So, I'll stick with the old term and emphasize that I'm using it in only one of its meanings.
Civilization starts with cities. The word comes from L. civitas and is related to the citizen of a civil place - a city. So civilization refers to urbanized societies.
That is the way we will use the term in this class. It is derogatory to oppose "civilization" with a term like "primitive", or what the Greeks called barbarian (the word barbarian comes from barb or beard ...).