Four Great Ancient Civilizations
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In Japanese and Chinese historiography, the Four Great Ancient Civilizations (Japanese: 世界四大文明, Hepburn: Sekai yon dai bunmei) (simplified Chinese: 四大文明古国; traditional Chinese: 四大文明古國; pinyin: Sì Dà Wénmíng Gǔ Guó) were Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, which are identified as the cradles of civilization. The concept is popularly used in Japan and China—for example in history textbooks—but not generally known in the western world.[1]
The origins of the phrase are unclear.[2] According to one theory, it originated with Japanese archaeologist Namio Egami; his colleague Masaaki Sugiyama recalled that Egami used to say that he coined the phrase. The first known occurrence of the phrase "four great civilizations" can be traced to a textbook titled Revised World History (再訂世界史, Saitei sekaishi), published by in 1952 by the Yamakawa Publishing Company, where Egami worked.[3]
Another theory is that the term originates with Liang Qichao, a Chinese intellectual that lived during the late Qing dynasty.[2] Specifically, in his 1900 poem Song of the Pacific in the 20th Century (Chinese: 二十世纪太平洋歌), he wrote "there are four motherlands of ancient civilizations on earth: China, India, Egypt, and Asia Minor" (Chinese: 地球上古文明祖國有四：中國、印度、埃及、小亞細亞是也).[2] This view of civilization was also influenced by Japanese thinkers such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, Ukita Zautami and Kayahara Kazan, who in turn were influenced by the western concept of a cradle of civilization.[4]
Liang Qichao divided the history of the world into three ages: the river age, the sea age, and the ocean age. The Four Great Ancient Civilizations originated in the river age and all of them developed along rivers. Scholars believe that they were all built near rivers because there were fixed water sources that made it easier for agriculture and commerce to develop. Human beings are clearly inseparable from water, but some historians believe that at the beginning of Chinese civilization, it first occurred in the mountains and then expanded to river areas.[5]
This four civilizations model is not universally used and has come under criticism from some Chinese historians in that the dates of the beginning of China's civilization does not place it in the first four.[6]