alt Hacker NewsCivilization refers to cities, not literature. Urban societies need writing and complex social rules to survive, but it's not as if those things can't or haven't arisen in other types of human societies.
Civilization refers to cities, not literature. Urban societies need writing and complex social rules to survive, but it's not as if those things can't or haven't arisen in other types of human societies.
Have they? I'm no historian, but from what I can tell following discussions of real historians they think that alphabet developed exactly once, and then spread (this leaves open the possibility non-alphabet writing may have developed separately).
Also I believe that Urban society is needed just to give enough people enough leisure time to sit and think of things like this. Hunter gathers can learn to read/write, but to figure it out they couldn't do.