The Redman-Childe List

The Redman-Childe list was created to describe a civilization and what is needed to be considered a civilization. The five things a civilization must have in order for it to be considered a civilization through Redman-Childe standards are a large urban center with high population density, concentration of surpluses, a class structured society, full time specialization of labor, and a state level of organization. Although there may be reasons why it is biased, this list of characteristics seems to fit well with Mauryan Empire of India, as it includes all the points on the list. When you apply the Redman-Childe list to the Mauryan Empire in India, under Chandragupta, you can see that it possesses every characteristic it needs to be considered a civilization. India, at nearly every point in its history, has had one of the highest population densities in the world, especially in its largest cities (@). This shows that the Mauryan Empire does fit with the first point of the Redman-Childe list, which says that it must have large urban centers with a high population density. The second point on the list is a concentration of surpluses. This means that there must be enough surplus

The fact that a lot of civilizations do not apply to the list means that the list must be slightly biased. This bias can alter the way we see the history of human civilization because if a civilization can’t apply to every point in the Redman-Childe list, they may not consider it to be a civilization, therefore making it less important. We could be missing incredibly important civilizations that affected other civilizations in our historical records because of this. The whole story of how other “more important” civilizations came to be may be removed if we forget about the ones they came from because they do not exactly follow the Redman-Childe