Perhaps, but then research also suggests that human migration started out of Africa, and all humans are linked to those 'common ancestors', so we are in essence talking about sub-groups within the larger group here, and human migration and evolution on its own is not 'civilization'.
You are stretching the argument to the begining of the human race and evolution. I am talking about historically established civilizations. All life forms evolved from protozoans inhabiting the primordial sludge. Why don't we start from there instead?
I don't believe what you described is necessarily applicable to just a 'civilization' - humans have migrated, spread and seeded throughout history. At times that migration, spreading and seeding might coincide with some 'civilization of the time', but the process itself is not tied into 'civilization' and does not, on its own, indicate the dispersion, expansion or dilution of any civilization - it merely points to the nature of humans to 'spread and seed' - I mean, all this points to is our ability to procreate does it not?
Exactly. So that is why what I said earlier holds true. There is something that separates historical pockets of humanity and makes them evolve over millenia as separate entities. Civilizations. And that something is Blood, Faith, and Soil. Only when all three come together and stay together does a civilization continue. Where one is replaced by another, a new civilization is born or merges into an existing one. Or is absorbed and dies.
Sure, but that is pointing the obvious is it not? All humans originated from a common ancestral source did they not?
We are not talking Darwinism and Evolution here. We are talking Civilization. The difference needs to be appreciated for this discussion to develop.
No need for knee jerk peevishness - Faith, as in religion, does involve worshiping a deity/deities, whether they be God, Allah, the Sun, Rain, Nature, Zeus, or Hanuman, and that was the context in which I used the term.
Ok, thank you for the clarification. The link to the earlier topic on Bharat and India caused the confusion. Let's move on then.
So if we can return to the question, what sort of 'common faith metric' are we looking at here, and how can this metric be defined t be exclusive to one set of people vs another, to imply civilizational continuity for the former set of people?
A common faith in combination with common blood and common soil makes a civilization. If that common faith is replaced by a new one, or there is a major influx of new genes, or if a major arm migrates to new lands, the old civilization either dies, or is replaced, or mutates into a new one, or morphs into an existing one. A common faith does not entail a common civilization anymore than many faiths in a common land creates one, or for that matter a common people spread over different lands.
How would Parsis be part of the same civilization as, say, those practicing the Vedic faith or its offshoots? Does that not remove one of your major metrics for civilizational continuity?
Parsis are too small to count. And are the outliers I was referring to earlier. It is obvious that we come from a different civilization to the Vedic one, though it may be argued that we are both joined at the hip as a people if you move back sufficiently.
And while you have offered your opinion on 'long enough', is your definition of 'long enough' not one merely pulled out of a hat by you? Is it not subjective? Why not exclude any group of people resident for less than 5000 years, or 10,000 years?
Not at all. My comments above should have clarified my stand further by now. Civilizations evolve. Mutate. Morph. Merge. Persevere. Or die. The discussion I believe was on the thread of continuity. About where you draw the line and say that this civilization is an ancient one versus this is the land or these are the people or this is the faith of what was once an ancient civilization.