Early Civilizations

Thousands of years ago, as mankind began to discover more elaborate discoveries in the world, people improved their lifestyle over a long period of time. Towns and villages grew immensely and before we knew it, a society had emerged. In these towns, the people normally had the same religion, culture, laws, and economy. The members in a society are what make up a civilization. When these people flourish together as a society, the civilization improves and becomes more advanced with knowledge and technology.

The five basic characteristics of early civilizations are Advanced Cities, Specialized Workers, Complex Institutions, Record Keeping, and Advanced Technologies. The first characteristic, {advanced cities}, is considered the birth place of civilizations. An advanced city is a center or trade and commerce for a large area. In these cities trade is the lifeline. Goods are traded in a place called the Bazaar. Since there was no currency at the time, people had to use a Barter system which was a way of trading goods and services without using any money.

This land around the Nile and the Delta by the Mediterranean Sea was seasonally flooded. This part of the land was very fertile and good for growing crops because of the rich silt. Also spread out through Egypt, there were oases, quarries and mines. After 3000 BC, the population was mainly gathered along the Nile River, and the deserts became centrally used for trade and mining excursions. Dry climates in 2500 BC had forced the Egyptian populations to move towards the Nile Valley. Eventually, the dry climates caused the formation of deserts in the areas that had been abandoned. On the contrary, the land in the Nile Valley was very fertile, because of the silt brought by flooding, and caused agricultural successes. Main crops included barley, wheat, and flax. Not much else was grown due to a lack of innovation. Away from the main river, limited areas were suitable for settlement. In the Faiyum specifically, there was little area that was suitable for settlement because of too wet of land around Lake Moeris, though the Delta experienced its own share of seasonal flooding.

grew very many crops that they used and sold. Middle Kingdom of Egypt were very good

Egypt started off slowly they were hunter-gatherers turned farmers of cattle by 7000 BC and other domesticates by 5000 BC. Pottery was established at about the same time with permeant settlements developing in 4000 BC leading to new technologies and new cultures such as the Badari, Naqada one, two and three and the Merimde culture. They developed into cities such as Heirankopolis, Abydos, Koptos and Naqada with social stratification found in Upper Egypt with the focus on wealth and social status and a more minimalistic approach in Lower Egypt. The city-states started to form an administration with government and rulers and unified Upper and Lower Egypt and developed Memphis the capital city. Soon after king's rules and the kings developed into Pharaohs, and although Egypt faced some hardships along the way to a great civilization it did not fall as its neighbours in the Indus Valley did. The Indus valley much like Egypt full of eager hunter-gatherers developing into small farming settlements which quickly developed into a full-blown civilization with the domestication of cattle, wheat, and barley. The Indus valley underwent extreme culture change from 2600- 2500 BC, from small settlements to a civilization with two main cities Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Both cities were technologically advanced with complex grid city plans, sanitation drains, and bath

Relationships with traders grew to where they would exchange for spices from Punt, stones from Bacteria, and wood

Some of the earliest human civilizations arose in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, in the fourth millennium B.C.E. In the second half of the millennium, in the south around the city of Uruk, there was an enormous escalation in the area occupied by permanent settlements. A large part of that increase took place in Uruk itself, which became a real urban center surrounded by a set of secondary settlements. While population estimates are notoriously unreliable, scholars assume that Uruk inhabitants were able to support themselves from the agricultural production of the field surrounding the city, which could be reached with a daily commute. But Uruk’s dominant size in the entire region, far surpassing that of other settlements,

As proven throughout all time periods in history, our ability as humans to function in a society is heavily dependent on organization, regulations, and cooperation amongst the individuals in a community. Even some of the most ancient civilizations such as the Mesopotamians who existed roughly between 5000-3500 BC kept certain set laws enabling them to construct a well ordered society. The Code of Hammurabi consisted of nearly 300 rules or more appropriately, “if and then” statements relating to crimes and their various punishments. The ancient Mesopotamians had a good sense of unlawful acts and although some disciplines were drastic most of them had equal retribution. For instance, the second law that was engraved on the eight-foot tall stela

Geographical features in the environment heavily influenced the development of early societies. In the same way, early societies had a large impact on the environment. Early cultivators interacted with their surroundings as hunter gatherers, or nomads in order to survive. Towards the start of the Neolithic revolution, our ancestors began to broadly utilize their environment to their advantage. One of the most significant geographical features was the Tigris and Euphrates river. Mesopotamia, otherwise known as the “land between two rivers”, received limited rainfall. The Tigris and Euphrates river compensated this by providing the ancient people with fresh-drinking water. Also, the ancient people realized they could harness the river by building reservoirs and canals. This eventually prompted the development if the first irrigation systems in 6000 B.C.E. The first irrigation systems were used to “irrigate their fields of barley, wheat, and peas”. As a result,

Each early civilization was different and unique in their own way, they all came up with their own advancements and all created a unique society. However each early civilization wasn't entirely unique, they each learned from the previous societies mistakes and shortcomings. Being the first civilization Mesopotamia acted as the template for all civilizations after it. Mesopotamia established city-states, a monarchy, polytheism, irrigation, and created a currency system as well as a writing system. Despite having a seemly organized society, Mesopotamia was divided and at odds with one another over their water source, and thus the civilization crumbled. In contrast Egypt was unified, albeit forcefully as they were surrounded by nothing but desert,

Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations are very different from each other. Although both civilizations’ rivers flooded, the Egyptians could predict when the Nile River would flood. This prevented their crops from being destroyed. But the Mesopotamians could not predict the floods. The Egyptians were protected from invasion, while the Mesopotamians were not. The Mesopotamians had strict rules for the women as Egyptian women had more control. Cities in Egypt were not very important while they were to the Mesopotamians.

A pre-axial civilisation was a primordial type of society built on paganist beliefs. In this type of civilisation, society was symbolically structured by a spiritual (transcendental) order rather than an earthly (mundane) order (Eisenstadt, 1982; 1986). In other words, society was structured according to the principles set by deity/deities (spiritual order) and not by humans (earthly order) of a specific civilisation. For instance, in pre-axial civilisations such as ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptians and Mesopotamians structured their societies based on a certain spiritual order. For a pre-axial civilisation, the spiritual order was generally perceived as “higher and stronger” (Eisenstadt, 1982: 296) than the earthly order

The Phoenicians were an Ancient Civilization, that had many independent city-states.The years that the Phoenicians lived was 1550 BC to 300 BC.Many generations of Phoenicians thrived, because they had many city-states. The Phoenicians lived on the western end of the fertile crescent. While living on this beautiful land it allowed them to have very good crops, since they had such rich soil. Since there were so many Phoenician civilizations they spread across the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Their territory was called Phoenicia, however this area is now the modern day countries of Syria, Lebanon and Northern Israel.

The way the people lived in these early civilizations had some similarities with the way we live today, except for the fact that we have developed more advanced tools and machineries. In my own opinion, yes, I think I can live in this kind of community. It’s just a matter of adapting to the conditions of the area and learning to value its traditions and culture.

The early human lived life by hunting, fishing and collecting wild plant, and their life was not organized. About 5000 years ago, a complex and organized way of life began in some part of the world. People live together in town, cities and others centers and started farming, industries, and also started writing, painting and other method of living. Later, there were specialize occupations emerged, complex religions took form and social diversion increased, and these changes lead to the birth of civilizations. There were many ancient civilizations in the world like, India civilization, Chinese civilization, Middle East civilization, Mesopotamian civilization, Egyptian civilization, Greek civilization, Roman civilization and others which greatly contributed to the development of the world history. Each civilization had their own way to follow culture, religions, public life, economic life, and others. Therefore, in this paper, I will describe how Indian civilization, Egyptian civilization and Greek Civilization made impacts in the way that we see today’s world and how these civilizations affected people’s life.