It can perhaps be best described as successive change. It cannot be
referred to as evolution except in its integrative aspect.
Disintegratively it becomes devolution.
Civilization is a result of sociological build-up at a certain cultural
level. It has not been universal in all human societies, but
exceptional, both in time and in geographical space.
What has caused the pattern of civilization to appear, disappear and
reappear again and again during the period of written history?
There have been many answers. The most general answer is divine
intervention by beings above and beyond mankind. Whether such
intervention has taken place or is taking place, human beings are unable
to say with finality, but several thousand years of recorded history,
plus our own daily experience provides convincing proof that the
political, economic, ideological and sociological constructs which have
appeared and disappeared in the course of social history are, at least
in large part, the products of human brains and human hands. They are
man-made.
The social pattern of civilization, like other social patterns which
preceded civilization and which continue to exist side by side with
civilized communities, is the result of human ingenuity and human
energy, of human inertia, ineptitude, and the human urges to build,
decorate and destroy.
Variety in human culture is caused by the variety in the human natural
environment, the human social environment and in man himself.
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