Top 10 Oldest Civilizations In the World 

In the course of time, the human began to live in a group and from small separated groups, larger communities have shaped, then became civilizations. Civilization has often been considered as a larger and more advanced culture. A civilization is a society that is interpreted by urban development, a form of government, and systems of communication.

Civilizations have a more complicated political structure. They are divided into different classes with a ruling class which normally concentrated in the cities and urban and rural populations, which engage in agriculture, mining, small-scale manufacture and trade. All civilizations have relied on agriculture. Civilizations tend to develop cultures, a literature, professional art, organized religion, taxation, specialized labour, education and political systems.

Scroll through to see all Top 10 Oldest Civilizations In the World :-

10. The Incan Civilization :-

The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The Inca civilization established in the Peruvian highlands sometime in the early 13th century. The Spanish began the conquest of the Inca Empire in 1532 and its last stronghold was overthrown in 1572. The Inca founded their capital at Cuzco in Peru in the 12th century. They started their conquests in the early 15th century and within 100 years had gained control of an Andean population of about 12 million people. Inca ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas incorporated a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean Mountains, using conquest and peaceful assimilation, among other methods. At its largest, the empire joined Peru, Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northwest Argentina, a large portion of Chile. Its official language was Quechua.

9. The Aztec Civilization :-

The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican culture that prospered in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec Empire, or the Triple Alliance, was an alliance of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled area around the Valley of Mexico from 1428, until the joint forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies, under the name of Hernán Cortés, overthrew them in 1521. At its height, the alliance regulated most of central Mexico as well as some more distant territories within Mesoamerica, such as the Xoconochco region, an Aztec exclave near the present-day Guatemalan border. The Aztec peoples included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups spoke the Nahuatl language and dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states, some of which united to form alliances, political confederations, or empires.

8. The Roman Civilization :-

Ancient Rome describes Roman civilization started from the founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, in turn encompassing the Roman Kingdom from 753–509 BC, Roman Republic from 509–27 BC and Roman Empire from 27 BC–476 AD until the fall of the western empire. The civilisation began as an Italic settlement in the Italian Peninsula, dated to 753 BC, that evolved into the city of Rome and which later gave its name to the empire over which it ruled and to the extensive civilisation the empire developed. The civilization was directed and ruled by the Romans. The Roman Empire expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world, still ruled from the city, with an estimated 50 to 90 million inhabitants roughly 20% of the world's population at the time and covering 5 million square kilometres at its height in AD 117.

7. The Persian Civilization :-

The Persian Empire is the term given to a series of empires centered in modern-day Iran that extended several centuries—from the sixth century B.C. to the twentieth century A.D. The first Persian Empire, established by Cyrus the Great around 550 B.C., became one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Europe’s Balkan Peninsula in the West to India’s Indus Valley in the East. Achaemenid Empire was a global hub of culture, religion, science, art and technology for more than 200 years before it fell to the invading armies of Alexander the Great. The Achaemenid Empire was stretched from the Balkans and Eastern Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. The empire was larger than any previous empire in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million km². The empire had its beginnings in the 7th century BC, when the Persians settled in the southwestern portion of the Iranian Plateau, in the region of Persis.

6. The Ancient Greek Civilization :-

Ancient Greece was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, that comprised a collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories—unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire. The civilization of Ancient Greece arose in the 8th century BC. And reaches to an end when Greece fell to the Romans, in 146 BC. However, major Greek kingdoms survived longer than this. As a culture, Greek civilization lasted longer still, continuing right to the end of the ancient world. One of the most brilliant civilizations in world history, the ancient Greeks laid many of the foundations for the whole of Western civilization. It developed radical innovations in a wide range of fields – philosophy, science, art, architecture, government and politics, and more.

5. The Chinese Civilization :-

Ancient China’s civilization started in the early 2nd millennium BCE, when a literate, city-based culture first arose, to the end of the Han dynasty, in 220 CE. The civilization of ancient China first developed in the Yellow River region of northern China, in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE. This was a very fertile region; however the land requires irrigation to make the crops grow, and well-built river barriers to prevent destructive flooding. This region is considered as the Cradle of China’s Civilization. It was here that the earliest Chinese dynasties were based. Around the ancient period of China’s history it shaped the heart of the Chinese world, and it was from here that Chinese civilization spread out across the rest of China. To the south, the great Yangtze valley, with its warm, wet climate, was the first area in the world where rice was grown, sometime before 5000 BCE. By this time all the crucial foundations of Chinese civilization had been laid down. Ancient China was one of the most crucial periods and places in world history. Its achievements can still be powerfully felt today, in a modern China and its world-wide impact.

4. The Maya Civilization :-

The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples. “Maya" is a modern word used to cite altogether to the various peoples that resided this area. The Archaic period, before 2000 BC, saw the first developments in agriculture and the earliest villages. The Preclassic period saw the establishment of the first complex societies in the Maya region, and the cultivation of the staple crops of the Maya diet, including maize, beans, squashes, and chili peppers. The first Maya cities developed around 750 BC, and by 500 BC these cities maintained monumental architecture, including large temples with elaborate stucco façades. The Maya civilization developed in the area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. Maya civilization is cited for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. They practiced agriculture, built great stone buildings and pyramid temples, worked gold and copper, and used a form of hieroglyphic writing that has now largely been clarified.

3. The Ancient Egyptian Civilization:- 

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient North Africa, developed along the lower reaches of the Nile River, located in the Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and united around 3100 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes. The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of comparable fluctuation known as Intermediate Periods. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came from its ability to adapt to the circumstances of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced excess crops, which assisted a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and encompassing desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Encouraging and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who assured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of a detailed system of religious principles. The many accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that helped the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely duplicated, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world.

2. The Indus Valley Civilization :-

The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE. Together with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was one of three early civilisations of the Near East and South Asia, and of the three, the most widespread, its sites stretching an area from today’s northeast Afghanistan, through much of Pakistan, and into western and northwestern India. It prospered in the basins of the Indus River, which streams through the Pakistan, and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers that previously flowed in the vicinity of the seasonal Ghaggar-Hakra river in northwest India and eastern Pakistan. The civilisation's cities were noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate drainage systems, water supply systems, clusters of large non-residential buildings, and new techniques in handicraft and metallurgy. The large cities of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa very likely thrived to enclose between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals, and the civilisation itself during its florescence may have contained between one and five million individuals.

1. The Mesopotamian Civilization :-

Mesopotamia is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. It has been known as one of the earliest civilizations to ever exist in the world. It occupies the area of present-day Iraq, and parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait. Mesopotamia comprises the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their sources in the Taurus Mountains. The Sumerians and Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of c. 3100 BC to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was overthrown by the Achaemenid Empire. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. It has been known as having "inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, and the development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture".