Reflection of Humanities

The ancient civilizations of the Ancient Egypt, as well as the great Mesopotamia, are the world’s greatest civilization as recorded by history. The civilization was highly facilitated by rivers which cut across their land. The Euphrates, Nile, as well as Tigris, constantly moving along the river banks which in turn resulted in the adjoining land is extremely fertile (Backman). This led to flourishment and development of Ur and Eriku cities in Mesopotamia as well as the city of Thebes in Egypt (Backman). The Nile was very significant in Ancient Egypt as it made invasion by enemies impossible due to its marshy deltas (Backman). On the other hand, Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia differed fundamentally in many aspects more specifically in how their societies were structured, cultural orientation, religion, technological experiences, literature, and art among other things (Backman). This paper will center on examining these differences as well as similarities between these two regions as well as what they communicate concerning the circumstances that people from these two regions faced.

Although early river valley civilizations developed in four separate places, they seem to have more similarities than differences. This essay will compare and contrast the ancient Egyptian, Harappan, Chinese, and Sumerian civilizations.

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

When analyzing the biological, cultural, and social, aspects of the ancient Sumerians and modern day humans we see a profuse amount of distinctions and contrasts. Modern humans live in advanced and culturally diverse societies which in comparison makes ancient Sumer’s way of life seem very plain. The two groups evidently share many differences , but the author, Samuel Kramer, argues that in the face of oblivious contrasts, the roots of these two societies are still very fundamentally analogous. Kramer then expands his point to say modern humans and ancient Sumerians are similar and comparable on the content of their character, their reactions to war and conflict, and with the similarity of their social class system.

I have spent the last two years studying world history with an emphasis on western civilization, and I will attempt to give a conspectus of what I have learned during that time. I have learned about a myriad of topics ranging from early Sumerian agricultural techniques to the U.S. intervention in Kosovo, therefore I will focus my efforts on an abbreviated overview of my studies. I will primarily focus on the governments of the major civilizations

From grammar jeopardy in English class to researching Túpac Amaru in Spanish, all of my classes at BHMS are extremely alluring and fun, but my Humanities class to stand out within all of my great classes. The Humanities class in BHMS is the perfect combination of hands-on education, creativity and Fun. Mixing those three things is a tough thing to do, but my teacher Launa Schweizer does it every time. She make every single class so fun and engaging, whether it is going outside and polling people or making an imaginary journey to Oregon. Humanities is by far my favorite class and always manages to interest me no matter what.

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.

World History AP withMr. Derrick-Learning Targets Part2- The Classical Era in World History, 500B.C.E. -500C.E.

Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia present a valuable area of historical research. They are of great importance mostly because of their ethnic kinship (Watson, 2017). In such case, comparison and contrast essay is very promising as causal relationships can be formed based on a mutual starting point. This comparison-contrast essay focuses on differences and similarities in these societies’ economic, political and cultural life in order to make further implications regarding the circumstances the peoples of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia faced.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were perhaps two of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world. These two civilizations thrived in their ancient environments which eventually led to a vast amount of prosperity within these two cultures. It is because of this prosperity that these ancient cultures were able to make a variety of advancements in literature, architecture, art and a variety of other fields. These two civilizations also produced some of the ancient world’s greatest writers, leaders, and philosophers. The cultures of ancient Greece and Rome made a number of contributions to western civilization in the form of advancements in literature, architecture, art, government, and philosophy.

First of all, one characteristic of a civilization is its writing system. Stated from document 3 “Civilizations develop writing systems” “Writing

The world of Late Antiquity is written by Peter Brown, a Professor of History at Princeton University. This book is an entertaining introductory text to the Late Antique period, AD 150 to 750. Brown delivers an entertaining account and perspective of how and why the Late Antique world came to differ from “Classical civilization.” Instead of focusing on the cause and effect of the civilization’s downfall, Brown emphasizes the changes that occurred and men’s reaction to them. His thesis centers around social and cultural changes and specifically states:

In this essay I will be considering only but one of the many questions that archaeologists analyse when researching the human past. As the title suggests, did civilization, or, a term preferably used by scholars; social complexity, arise from a conflicted band of nomadic people or from a mutual consensus among them? As well as my own thought’s, I will be discussing the ideologies of a number of professionals, both in archaeology and social anthropology, focusing mainly on the early development of the archaic Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican civilisations.

The Sumerians were the first people to build civilization and attempt empire in the western world. Like Rome, they had a governmental structure, conducted military operations to expand and ensure trade, and build a lasting civic structure. The Sumerians, however, were not as effective as the Romans in most respects. Rome had a strong central government; the Emperor was absolute ruler.

A civilization is a place defined by its culture, its characteristics, and its social structure.There are many important characteristics of a civilization, but if it had to come down to 3 of them I would say social class, writing, and government are most important.Even though technology is an important characteristic to civilization I believe that social class, writing, and government are most important.