Major Characteristics Of Ancient Civilizations

With governmental machinery that brought political and social order to their territories, effective political and military power enabled them to build regional empires and expand their authority to neighboring people. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were two great civilizations among the earliest to emerge in the Middle east and North Africa. Both made significant contributions in areas such as mathematics, medicine, agriculture, astronomy, technology, architecture, art and writing. They had differences as well, including their political structures. Most importantly is that Egyptians were under a centralized government, and the Mesopotamians had self-controlled city state governments.

3. A. For a social organization to qualify as a civilization, it must have the following characteristics:

When you look back in history to the development and the contributions of both the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, you see that there was a lot accomplished, as well as a lot created. The earliest forms of writing developed in Mesopotamia, while Egypt was referred to the “Gift of the Nile” by traveler Herodotus (McKay,42). Development of cities was another major marker, especially in the “old world”, of how people eventually determined civilizations and what they represented. According to McKay, civilizations were determined by people who considered themselves more “civilized”, urban people mostly. Made up of cities, written rules of law, and social justice codes, Mesopotamia and Egypt would develop into two of the largest civilizations in history.

During 3000 BC, Sumerian was the first cyclical empire, even though they came to a fall the Sumerian people made an impact on Western Civilization. This empire kept history alive, but never forgotten. The wheel was one of their many inventions which are still used today for cars, and manual labor like wheel barrels and lawnmowers. The epic poem Gilgamesh is still a book read today in English classes. This epic poem is inspiring and was an actual historical figure. The Sumerians contributed several ideas, the first organized religion temples and priests. The Sumerians also gave us the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, which was a story about a river dividing itself into 4 river heads, two of the four being the Tigris and the Euphrates River. The water supply was an accommodating way of trade. The Sumerians were the first international traders. They also invented writing, the Sumerians wrote of cuneiform blocks, now student can write on paper but it was a start being able to write thoughts down. The Sumerians had countless clever ideas; they also invented the potter’s wheel, which was used for making pottery to store food and goods. The plow was used for farming and the sailboat was used for traveling up or down the river, for trading or

By about 4000 BCE, the peoples of Sumer organized themselves into several independent city-states. Each of these city-states surrounded a ziggurat dedicated to that particular city’s patron god and were ruled

Have you ever thought about your ancestors and their clothes, culture, language, jobs, or even to which ancient civilization they belonged? Before ancient civilizations were established though, life was all about being a hunter-gatherer. Imagine your greatest grandfather living a tough life where he had to move around all the time in a small group and hunt whatever he could find for food. Although that lifestyle lasted for thousands of years, early humans eventually began forming villages and communities, later known as civilizations. Nevertheless, these civilizations could not have formed our world today without three essential elements; domestication, surplus of food and resources, and specialization of labor.

The civilization that flourished in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Palestine were located in river valleys or along the Mediterranean coast. These civilizations developed highly complex cultures that shared many common characteristics. Some of the characteristics that they shared were justice, cultural diffusion, architecture and inventions. Because of these characteristic they achieved and contributed a lot to society as well as to future civilizations.

The society of Sumer, as said in a document “ was home to a privileged class of elites who headed households by nearby irrigated land”. Sumer was a growing civilization with a written language, education, government, religion, economy, and family hierarchy. “Sumer was a particular civilization that developed in the region of Mesopotamia.” Due to Mesopotamia being so plentiful, this let Sumer bloom into a great civilization. A written language in Sumer was in the form of cuneiform, characters formed by the arrangement of small wedge-shaped elements.

In 1950, V Gordon Childe drew up a list of traits of to what he considered to be the common characteristics of early civilizations. According to Fagan & Scarre, a recent archaeologist Charles Redman divided Childe’s list into primary and secondary characteristics. The primary characteristics included cities and states, together with full-time specialization of labor, concentration of surplus, and a class-structured society. For the secondary, the characteristics included symptoms or by-products of these major economic and organizational changes: monumental public works, long-distance trade, standardized monumental artworks, writing, and the sciences (arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy)(Scarre and Fagan 2003). One of the most common characteristics involve was a large, dense population living in a city. This essay well state and describe two early cities in Mesopotamia and explore the layouts and characteristics of these two cities. Also, whether each city is unique or share common characteristics with each other. The two cities are Maskan-shapir and Ur.

Most people believe that all ancient civilizations were the same: they all lived with a steadfast loyalty to their one and only king that ruled all of the lands, civilizations only achievements were monumental buildings, and they vacuously attacked neighboring societies to gain more land for millennia. While some of this knowledge is true to an extent, civilizations accomplished an abundance more than some realize. Some fail to register that early civilizations are unique from each other. Egypt and Mesopotamia were two distinct civilizations. Despite similarities such as both being river civilizations, Egypt and Mesopotamia contrasted with each other in the areas of, type of ruling, religion, and

Throughout the history of Earth, there have been many fascinating developments, the most prominent being the first civilizations, Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. They had many similarities, such as characteristics of early civilizations and social structures, but they also had their differences. The most embossed differences included the divergent geography, prior belief, trade, relations with other civilizations, and politics.

Mesopotamia is a rich flat plain created by deposits from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. At the southern end of this plain developed the first recognizable civilization, in the area known as Sumer. In 3000 B.C. Sumer contained a dozen or more city-states, each ruled by its own king and worshiped its own patron deity. The citizens of these city-states were classified into three classes: nobles and priests, commoners, and slaves. In the center of a

Throughout history, societies have been divided. Divisions have been created through war, by money, and because of power struggles. Ancient Sumer was no different. There were three main classes in Ancient Sumer that contributed to this division in society.

I believe Ancient Egypt in a civilization because it has all seven indicators! It has Complex religion, social classes, specialized workers such as craftsmen & artisans, organized government, long-distance trade, cities & methods of record keeping.

Question: Try to imagine what it was like to live during that time and in that place. What was it that caused the transition from Neolithic life to 'civilization?' What were some of the major features of those civilizations that you found interesting?