Civilisation Summarised
From "Civilisation Defined" by P Atkinson (17-Dec-23)

Civilisation is the blossoming then shrivelling of the shared understanding known as society, manifested as the rise then fall of a dominant society.

A Dominant Society imposes its beliefs upon all other societies by violence (war) or its threat, which must involve the threat, or use of, genocide so any society that recoils from inflicting genocide will suffer genocide.

A Society is a shared understanding; a creature that has a lifespan set by its ability to pass its shared understanding onto successive generations. This demands imbuing each generation with its founding beliefs about right and wrong, which are the foundation of every understanding, and form its religion. Inevitably each new generation will contain a number of unbelievers, who eventually become the majority. Whereupon the shared understanding is lost and the society declines. Hence a society:

N.B. As a civilisation is a society, and a society is an understanding, then the study of civilisation must be the study of understanding, which is the realm of philosophy.

The Premises

The Theory in Detail