Geographic Location Affect The Development Of Civilization

During the 1600s the colonies in the New World started to develop based off of different factors. The colonies all developed for different reasons, some were gold, some God, and some glory. Yet, all were affected by their location and what it had to offer. Geography was the primary factor in the development of the colonies, because it affected everything from the people that it attracted to the jobs that it provided to the food that they ate.

Geography had a tremendous impact on early civilizations, the topography of the different regions played a key role in their development and formation. This statement by Fernand Braudel “ Geography is the stage in which humanity’s endless dramas are played out” (Getz et al., Exchanges, 26) is a very moving and telling description. The terrain, whether it is natural or man made is not the end all, be all. It does however affect the stage a great deal. Mountainous areas act as blockades, which keep the societies independent, plains open up the area, and rivers enable everything to move around freely. 2

Domestication is a very useful skill that has remained the same for many years. Animals can be used for meat, milk, wool, etc. They are also used as farming tools and transportation. Certain animals much better suited to domestication than others; Jared Diamond calls this the “anna Karenina principle’ (Class Lecture).

Agriculture is the main reason we have civilization today, for without food surplus people would spend their days finding food and water constantly. Native Americans started like all other people in the world, doing just that, until over time they turned food production into an art. Without the elaborate specialization of crops over time, people would not have reached the point that they had before the Europeans had arrived. The allowance of food surplus led to the ability to advance culturally, scientifically, and economically.

During the years of 3500 BC to 2500 BC, the geography of a land often impacted a civilizations development in great measures. Depending on the resources available or the detriments present due to certain topographical characteristics like rivers or deserts, a civilization could flourish or collapse. By studying the geographic features of growing societies like the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris Rivers as well as the Mediterranean Sea of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the link between developing cultures and geography will be examined through sources, including Egypt: Ancient Culture, Modern Land edited by Jaromir Malek and Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek. To determine the extent

Intense human interaction benefited society because humans found ways to take advantage of the environment for better survival, exchange ideas between empires, and strengthen relationships between themselves to create unified empires. Humans took advantage of the environment through domestication and tools to make their lives easier. In the Old World humans domesticated animals such as dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, donkeys, goats, and some fowls (Document E). The domestication of these animals allowed humans in Afro-Eurasia to have access to work animals. Using these domesticated animals gave humans in the Old World the ability to work faster and move heavy loads.

Not only did the domestication of animals help create a surplus of food, it also helped them with their work because the animals could do tasks for the humans. These documents support the statement that the switch from hunting and gathering to

How they domesticated wild animals and plants for milk, food, clothing, and more, and the benefits of domestication over the hunter-gathering culture. More food meant more calories for humans meaning more work. More work meant higher crop yields which meant more population density which meant more people could work, and the cycle continued over and over again. The reason food production was so successful in Europe was because the continent lies east to west creating a similar climate for food to grow. Europe also has more open fields compared to Africa, the Americas, and Australia, where there were deserts, jungles, and drastically different climates. The conversion from the hunter-gatherer society to the domestication of wild animals and farming society was gradually and took many years and there are still hunter-gatherer societies today.

The “Factors Underlying the Broadcast Pattern of History” chart shows the spreading and domesticating of plants and animals and the pros and cons of it on civilization. I agree with the author that when you have domesticated animals in the civilization food storage and surpluses; large dense, sedentary, stratified societies with political

Along with the humans, animals made and were a key part to the Columbian exchange. Non domesticated and domesticated animals made an impact on the new world. When the Europeans brought horses, pigs, sheep, and cattle across the ocean it introduced a new means of transportation, a new labor form, and new food sources. For example, horses were very useful in battles and transportation. They carried people quickly from one place to another. In battles, horses allowed people to fight from a higher level or degree, thus giving them an advantage. As for pigs, another important animal, people ate them as a new food source. It says, “Pigs were also a key animals used during ocean travels because they could be dumped on the way to a country or place and then picked up and eaten on the way back. The horse, too, was also a very useful animals as it helped with battle; it allowed for faster travel, it allowed for the surprising of opponents, and

Geography and the environment play a monumental role in the establishment and success of a nearly every civilization. For example, rivers bring water and allow for agricultural development, while mountains or deserts provide for protection and create a barrier. Many things, such as the aforementioned deserts and mountains, can offer both positive and negative influences on the society in question. The climate and amount of rainfall is directly related to the success or failure of crop growing, and thus related to the amount of time spent on simply surviving. Civilizations that are able to spend less time on subsistence farming are able to redirect that energy towards the establishment of arts, culture, religion, and science. Where a

Inequality is still common in the world today. Some suggest that inequality is a result of some people being biologically inferior to others. Jared Diamond challenges this by taking specifically about what gave the Spanish an advantage over the Incas.

Geography influences culture in many ways. A civilizations geography determines what kind of god(s) they believe in as well as influences from other cultures. These features provide a stepping stone for cultures that are solely based on geography.

The beneficial continental circumstances enjoyed by Eurasians first appears in vegetation. The Fertile Crescent was endowed with diverse, abundant, and highly productive cereals and pulses such as wheat, barley, and pea that yielded both starch and protein. These food staples were domesticated very quickly and with little effort by Eurasians, whose newfound farms gave rise to specialization and division of labor. Conversely, in the Americas, the sole cereal crop of corn took many more thousands of years of domesticated refinement to prove useful to humans. Mr. Diamond also places great emphasis on the geographic East-West orientation of Eurasia. A plant growing at a given latitude can grow at that latitude the world over. Thus, Eurasia's East-West orientation was highly conducive to the rapid spread (by trade) of productive domesticated grains across the continent. Conversely, the Americas, Africa, and Australia were impaired by their North-South orientation, which dictated that domesticated plants from people of one latitude were of little use to their neighbors to the North and South. Compounding the effect, the trade of agricultural technology in Eurasia ultimately led to trade in other things, such as technological advances, including writing and language

When societies began farming, food surpluses were often developed. This caused an urgency to develop proper food storage so food could be kept until needed. These surpluses meant that societies would always hold enough food to feed everyone, so that no one would starve or be forced to skip meals. With proper food storage, food could be kept longer than it had been until this point. Again, though, for each of these positive results of agriculture there is a negative one to counterbalance it.