8 Reading: Akkadian Empire
River Valley Civilizations
The first civilizations formed in river valleys, and were characterized by a caste system and a strong government that controlled water access and resources.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Explain why early civilizations arose on the banks of rivers
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Points
- Rivers were attractive locations for the first civilizations because they provided a steady supply of drinking water and game, made the land fertile for growing crops, and allowed for easy transportation.
- Early river civilizations were all hydraulic empires that maintained power and control through exclusive control over access 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 rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government, since changes in ruling were usually in personnel, but not in the structure of government.
Key Terms
- Water shortage: Water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse.
- Water crisis: There is not enough fresh, clean water to meet local demand.
- caste: A form of social stratification characterized by endogamy (hereditary transmission of a lifestyle). This lifestyle often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.
- hydraulic empire: A social or governmental structure that maintains power through exclusive control of water access.
- 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.
- Neolithic Revolution: Also called the Agricultural Revolution, this was the wide-scale transition of human cultures from being hunter-gatherers to being settled agriculturalists.
- Water stress: Difficulty in finding fresh water, 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 India on the Indus. These early civilizations began to form around the time of the Neolithic Revolution (12000 BCE).
Rivers were attractive locations for the first 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
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