The Tigris-Euphrates River Valley Civilization/The Fertile Crescent

Prompt: Even though early river valley civilizations developed in four different places, they have more similarities than differences. Agree or disagree. Use at least 5 documents in your answer.

Document 1: The Tigris-Euphrates River Valley Civilization/The Fertile Crescent

Why is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates called the “Fertile Crescent?”

Document 2:

“The Sumerians…Having no stone or timber, they built with marsh reeds and river mud, invented the brick mold and erected cities of baked clay. They canaled the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and turned Sumer into a veritable Garden of Eden. To manage their irrigation systems they originated regional government, thus emerging from the petty social oder of the family and village to the city-state.

-Region in World History, Allyn and Bacon

Why was the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers important to ancient Sumerians? Document 3: Cuneiform tables from Sumer and Babylonia, 3000 BC

What do Cuneiform tablets tell us about Sumerian civilization?

Document 4:

Greetings, Oh Nile,…who comes in peace to give Egypt life; hidden god who guides the darkness,…irrigator of the meadows…to give all animals life; you feed the earth;…friend of bread and fruitfulness, benefactor of the grain.

-Hymn to the Nile

Explain the importance of the Nile Rive to ancient Egypt?

Document 5:

Some several thousand years ago there once thrived a civilization in the Indus Valley. Located in what's now Pakistan and western India, it was the earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent. The Indus Valley Civilization, as it is called, covered an area the size of western Europe. It was the largest of the four ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. However, of all these civilizations the least is known about the Indus Valley people. This is because the Indus script has not yet been deciphered. There are many remnants of the script on pottery vessels, seals, and amulets, but without a "Rosetta Stone" linguists and archaeologists have been unable to decipher it. -The Harappan Civilization by Tarini J. Carr

How does the Indus River Valley civilization compare to the ancient Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia?

Document 6:

One such civilization was the Harappan civilization that developed in the Indus River Valley thousands of years ago. It was not until the 1920s that the world learned of the existence of this civilization. In 1922, a team of archaeologists uncovered one of the cities from the civilization. A vast region including present-day Pakistan and northern India made up the territory controlled by the Harappan civilization. Rich farmlands provided food for the people in over a hundred cities and towns. Goods were transported to and from the farms by means of a series of canals. Life was good in this civilization. The people had mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic. People in the cities enjoyed such modern conveniences as indoor plumbing, sewage systems, and heated public baths.

-World History, Glencoe

According to the reading, why was life good in Ancient Harappan civilization?

Document 7:

As in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and along the Indus River, Chinese civilization began within a major river valley. Modern China itself is a huge geographical expanse. Around 4000 BC, this huge area contained an almost infinite number of ethnic groups and languages. The course of Chinese history, however, is in part dominated by a single ethnic group and language. This history, in which a vast area populated by diverse ethnic groups became, over time, a more or less single culture, began in the Yellow River Valley.

The Yellow River is the northernmost of the major Chinese rivers. Directly to the south is the Yangtze River; south of the Yangtze is the West River; south of the West River is the Red River, much of which passes through modern-day Vietnam. Sometime around 4000 BC, when the area was much more temperate and forested, populations around the southern bend of the Yellow River began to practice agriculture. They sowed millet, but some time later, the Chinese began cultivating rice to the south, near the Huai River. These were a Neolithic, tribal people who used stone tools. We know also that they domesticated animals very early on, but they still continued as a hunter society as well. Remains of game animals are almost as common as domestic animals in these villages. We know almost nothing about them, for they left no records, and the life-blood of a people does not flow in the archaeological refuse they leave behind. We believe that tribal warfare was common and that they may have had some form of ancestor worship, but these are mere guesses.

Yellow River Valley Culture-WSU.edu

How was the beginning of Chinese civilization similar to the origins of Mesopotamian, Indian, and Egyptian culture?

Document 8:

The early Chinese first settled along the Huang River-also called the Yellow River-about 5000 B.C. Hundreds of years later, farming villages were built there. By about 3000 B.C. Chinese farmers were growing grain in the valley’s rich soil. They were also raising cattle and sheep. Like the Egyptians along the Nile River, the people in the Huang valley learned how to build dikes to control floods. They also built ditches and canals to irrigate their fields. The Huang River was not as regular as the Nile in ancient Egypt. Some years the Huang did not flood. In other years the Huang’s flood broke through the dikes along its banks and destroyed crops as well as whole villages. For this reason the Chinese named the Huang the River of Sorrows.

Exploring World History. Globe Book Company

How was life along the Yellow River both similar and different from life along the Nile River? Document 9:

What are at least 4 elements of civilization?

Prompt: Even though early river valley civilizations developed in four different places, they have more similarities than differences. Agree or disagree. Use at least 5 documents in your answer.