4 Ancient River Valley Civilizations

Learning Objective

Explain why early civilizations arose on the banks of rivers

Key Points

Rivers were attractive locations for the first civilizations considering they provided a steady supply of drinking h2o and game, made the state fertile for growing crops, and allowed for easy transportation.
Early on river civilizations were all hydraulic empires that maintained ability and control through sectional control over admission to water. This system of government arose through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.
Hydraulic hierarchies gave rising to the established permanent institution of impersonal government, since changes in ruling were commonly in personnel, but not in the structure of government.

Terms

Fertile Crescent

A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, and the Nile Valley and Nile Delta of northeast Africa. Often called the cradle of civilization.

Hydraulic empire

A social or governmental construction that maintains ability through exclusive control of water access.

Caste

A form of social stratification characterized by endogamy (hereditary transmission of a lifestyle). This lifestyle often includes an occupation, ritual condition in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.

Water crisis

There is not enough fresh, make clean water to meet local demand.

Water shortage

Water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse.

Neolithic Revolution

Also chosen the Agricultural Revolution, this was the wide-scale transition of human cultures from being hunter-gatherers to beingness settled agriculturalists.

H2o stress

Difficulty in finding fresh h2o, or the depletion of available water sources.

The First Civilizations

The first civilizations formed on the banks of rivers. The most notable examples are the Ancient Egyptians, who were based on the Nile, the Mesopotamians in the Fertile Crescent on the Tigris/Euphrates rivers, the Ancient Chinese on the Yellow River, and the Ancient Republic of india on the Indus. These early civilizations began to grade around the time of the Neolithic Revolution (12000 BCE).Rivers were attractive locations for the offset civilizations because they provided a steady supply of drinking water and made the land fertile for growing crops. Moreover, goods and people could be transported easily, and the people in these civilizations could fish and hunt the animals that came to drink water. Additionally, those lost in the wilderness could return to civilization by traveling downstream, where the major centers of human population tend to concentrate.

Hydraulic Empires

Though each culture was uniquely different, we can see mutual patterns amongst these offset civilizations since they were all based around rivers. Virtually notably, these early civilizations were all hydraulic empires. A hydraulic empire (besides known every bit hydraulic despotism, or h2o monopoly empire) is a social or governmental construction which maintains power through exclusive control over water access. This system of regime arises through the demand for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy. This political structure is normally characterized by a system of hierarchy and command based effectually class or caste. Power, both over resources (food, h2o, energy) and a means of enforcement, such as the war machine, are vital for the maintenance of command. Most hydraulic empires exist in desert regions, only purple People's republic of china as well had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation. The only hydraulic empire to be in Africa was nether the Ajuran Land near the Jubba and Shebelle Rivers in the 15th century CE.Karl Baronial Wittfogel, the High german scholar who first developed the notion of the hydraulic empire, argued in his book, Oriental Despotism (1957), that stiff authorities control characterized these civilizations because a particular resource (in this case, river h2o) was both a central part of economic processes and environmentally limited. This fact made controlling supply and demand easier and allowed the establishment of a more complete monopoly, and also prevented the employ of alternative resources to compensate. Nonetheless, information technology is also important to note that complex irrigation projects predated states in Madagascar, Mexico, China and Mesopotamia, and thus it cannot be said that a primal, express economic resource necessarily mandates a strong centralized bureaucracy. Co-ordinate to Wittfogel, the typical hydraulic empire government has no trace of an independent elite—in contrast to the decentralized bullwork of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related past diverse degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent establishment of impersonal regime. Pop revolution in such a land was very hard; a dynasty might dice out or exist overthrown by strength, only the new authorities would differ very little from the erstwhile one. Hydraulic empires were unremarkably destroyed by foreign conquerors.

Water Scarcity Today

Access to water is still crucial to modern civilizations; h2o scarcity affects more than 2.8 billion people globally. Water stress is the term used to describe difficulty in finding fresh water or the depletion of bachelor water sources. Water shortage is the term used when water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse. Water crisis is the term used when there is not enough fresh, make clean water to run into local need. H2o scarcity may be concrete, meaning there are inadequate water resource bachelor in a region, or economic, significant governments are not managing available resources properly. The United Nations Development Plan has plant that water scarcity mostly results from the latter issue.