The Daily Telegraph

Rebirth of ‘Civilisati­on’ is more Judith Chalmers than Kenneth Clark

- TIM STANLEY follow Tim Stanley on Twitter @timothy_stanley; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

Civilisati­ons is a hot mess, which the Urban Dictionary defines as: “When one’s thoughts or appearance are in a state of disarray but they maintain an undeniable attractive­ness.”

The BBC’S nine-part history of mankind is spectacula­r, but intellectu­ally incoherent. Kenneth Clark’s 1969 original had a clear idea of what civilisati­on is and its moral worth; the 2018 remake is at pains not to be didactic. The result is a global tour of the highlights of evolution: a historian’s version of Wish You Were Here…? I half-expected Judith Chalmers to pop up at a Mayan temple: “For just £200, Thomas Cook offers full board for five nights in a room with a view of the human sacrifice.”

Simon Schama opened the series with the sacking of Palmyra by Isil. We might not agree what civilisati­on is, said Schama, but we know it when it’s desecrated. The implicatio­n: civilisati­on is art, and so man’s “second moment of creation” was when he first etched diamond patterns on a piece of red ochre in Africa. But if we have no artistic record, does that mean there was no civilisati­on? That hands a lot of power to the archivist who chooses what we see.

Schama, who has the eloquence of a poet, gushed over some super shots of Petra and Minoan jewellery. But where were, say, the Hittites, whose capital was guarded by magnificen­t stone lions? You can’t cover it all in an hour, but if you don’t define your terms and explain why you’re narrowing your focus, someone’s going to complain that their favourite GCSE subject hasn’t come up.

There’s another problem: lots of civilisati­ons have been looters and destroyers. The Viking raiders; the Puritan iconoclast­s. Isil not only believes itself to be civilised but is modelled on an older civilisati­on: they think they are accurately emulating the code and culture of the early Islamic conquerors. If you adopt a relativist point of view, any society could thus be deemed “civilised” on its own terms, and we can all go weak at the knees at their lovely masks. But say the word “civilisati­on” to the man in the street and he’ll infer some moral quality, even as he acknowledg­es that the Romans might have had ethics but they also had slaves and gladiators.

Personally, that’s why I don’t rate the ancients. For me, civilisati­on is not a state but a process, the evolution of human conscience, which begins with Jewish law, reaches a peak with Christ and has been about living up to his impossibly high standards ever since.

That’s just my opinion, but at least I’ve got one. I’d happily watch a Marxist history of mankind if it had a thesis that involved more judgment than “Oooh, look at that lovely spear!”

Civilisati­ons lacks a mind of its own because it’s an indictment of too much of the BBC’S output: made by committee, politicall­y correct, lacking courage and obsessed with commercial value. I just hope Schama got a good tan out of it.

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