Why Are Cities An Essential Part Of Civilization Questions And Answers

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.

Closely associated with the process of globalisation is the notion of ‘World cities’. World cities are those such as London, New York and Tokyo where urban function has moved beyond the national scale to become a part of the international and global system. They are centres of culture, economics, employment, tourism, transport and communications and have been referred to as the command centres of the World’s borderless economy.

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.

In conclusion there is many reasons why Mesopotamia and Egypt develop into a successful civilization some of them are the nile river floods that people depended on for food and water and the rivers that provided resources such as transportation, trade and plants or pharaoh that the Egyptians believed in and thought he had absolute power or the sumerians and akkadians that were polytheistic and believed in many gods and keeping the gods happy for their own happiness, also Hammurabi code that concerned to a daily life laws like making justice or destroying evil and wicked all of these reasons made Mesopotamia and egypt successful

The Neolithic Revolution was the major change in human life caused by the beginnings of farming. This revolution changed people’s lives in several ways. It changed the way people lived because before the Neolithic Revolution they relied on hunting and gathering food. It also changed the way they settled, because of this revolution they were able to live in villages for a long time, unlike before; they had to relocate often because their food source would become scarce.  The way civilizations lived changed because of the Neolithic Revolution. A civilization is a form of culture that consists of cities, advanced technology, specialized workers, complex institutions, and record keeping. The early river valley civilizations; which developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus, and China, had more similarities than differences. The river valley civilizations were similar when it came to their writing systems, inventions, and geography. However, they were also different when it came to writing systems and inventions.

Civilization: an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached.

1. What are some similarities and differences among the cities and city-states that developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus River Valley?

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.

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.

Early civilization shared similar common features, because all of these societies were under the same pressures. Their whole purpose was survival as it is to this day. Each societies main focus was to become established, stay in one place provide food, shelter and protection for their families. Early civilizations materialize along rivers, because rivers supplied a continuous and dependable supply of water for farming and human consumption. Agriculture today has had an enormous benefit on today’s society, there are now more farmers growing organic fruits and vegetables because the realize the great health benefits organic foods have on human consumption, providing less risk of pesticides and or chemicals on their food.

Cities are characterized by the patterns of streets and squares that define their arrangement, a concept that undergoes frequent changes since the establishment of cities 10,000 years ago. There are multitude factors that influence such changes with system of government, values, population size, values, artistic sensibility, building methods, design techniques, paving techniques, military considerations, and transport technology being the main determinants. Medieval architectural designs emphasized on rigid grid forms, that contemporary writers of the history of urban planning and design, assume the presence of grids even in plans where they exist in approximate forms. Absence of grids is often perceived as lack of planning. Nevertheless, it is critical to note that the complex patters of streets in medieval cities were neither random nor chaotic.

In the first civilization, both Mesopotamia and Egypt relied on a hunter-gatherer economic system, during that time, every country in the world strived on it. Mesopotamia had rich soil for agriculture, but experiences floods. For the Mesopotamians, these floods would destroy major cities, but for the Egyptians it would keep the soil rich all year long without the damage that the Mesopotamians had experienced.

Early civilizations we have learned include Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China. After learning about these civilization, I can include there were many impacts to the development and spread of these civilizations. Although trade and conquest were the two more prominent impacts, conflict (conquest) had the most important impact on the developments of these early civilizations.

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.

Both the African and Mesopotamian civilizations developed out of small farming communities who practiced small-scale agriculture. In both areas, advances in agriculture led to increased populations living in densely-populated cities, which allowed the people to divide labor and specialize in different things. The division of labor led to advancement in almost every area: from engineering and agriculture to art and, especially, the political organizations that organized the whole society and made all of those things possible. Both civilizations developed writing systems, originally developed to keep records, but soon used to express imaginations, beliefs, and to write down the histories of their nations.