Seven Stages of Rise and Fall of the Civilization
The first stage of rise and fall of civilization as argued by Quigley (1979) in his book “Historical
Change in civilization”, is mixture. Mixture occurs in different ways, first is when people trade goods
or services, the traders bring their products to their hometown and sometimes they replicate this
product or innovate it to have a new use and then it became part of their civilization. When people
innovate, this means that they acquired new knowledge and see the value of improving things. The
result of invention or innovation will be traded again resulting to another mixture of civilization.
Due to continues trading, their capacity of life will improve resulting to savings and investments that
implies that they’re thinking of their future. Invasion is the other event that result to mixture. When
invaders successfully invade the civilization, they apply their knowledge, religion, language, and etc.
to their conquered people thus resulting to another mixture. The second stage is gestation, this is the
time where a civilization is peaceful, and their status is stable. This is also a stage where investment
and invention take place. Though there is only a little change in their lives, this is still considered as a
good condition. The third stage is expansion. There are 4 kinds of expansion, first is increase in
production of goods, this kind of expansion means that the standard of living of the civilization is
rising. Second is increase in population, this means that the death rate is less than the birth rate,
resulting to increase in manpower and stable standard of living. Third is increase in territory, cause
by expansion or invasion that shows their wealth and power and now gives them more gold, glory,
and growth, The fourth is increase in knowledge, this means that their view in improving things,
inventing things, saving, and investment is broad. The fourth stage is the age of conflict, where
decline in expansion, growing irrationality, frequent wars, and growth of tension between the
citizens itself that causes internal conflict occurs. The fifth stage is the universal empire, this stage
occurs after invasion or war for expansion. The civilization is again united in a single empire and
growth is visible within the citizens thus resulting to its golden age. The sixth stage is the decay. The
standard of living is visible across the civilization due to economic depression, The civilization is
divided due to internal conflicts, the reluctancy of its people to support and fight for their society
due to the conflicts and hardships, and the illiteracy due to wars within their own people. The last is
the stage of invasion. Due to divided society, they are now more vulnerable to number of invasion
and eventually will destroy their civilization and a new one will emerge resulting to the period of
mixture.