RIVER VALLEY

CIVILIZATIONS
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020
River Valley Civilizations
● The world’s major civilizations developed along rivers, which have both united and divided human
beings. Water is life, without water there would be no human civilization, indeed there would be no
life. We use water to drink, navigate, fish, wash, cool down, cook, travel, water plants, and ...
From Nomads to Sedentary
● Roughly 12,000 years ago early human groups in different parts of the world started doing
something rather strange.
● They stopped moving. As nomadic hunter-gatherers settled into non-mobile sedentary societies,
they began relying on agriculture more than hunting, developed surpluses of crops, and slowly
started to grow.
● 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.
Attractive Locations
● 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.
RISE OF CIVILIZATIONS
● Within a few thousand years, some of these tiny settlements weren't so tiny any more.
In fact, some of them were pretty massive, and several had something in common: they
were based around rivers.
● In fact, many of the so-called cradles of civilization, the first truly complex societies,
all developed around major river valleys.
● Why? Well, there's enough fresh water to sustain agriculture and a growing population,
rivers tend to have fish for food, and are good for both defense and trade.
● The history of the rise of civilizations is complex but this one theme persists: a
river runs through it.
Reasons why they settled near rivers
● 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.
Water scarcity today
● Access to water is still crucial to modern civilizations; water scarcity affects more than 2.8 billion people
globally.
● Water stress is the term used to describe difficulty in finding fresh water or available 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, clean water to meet local demand.
● Water scarcity may be physical, meaning there are inadequate water resources available in a region, or
economic, meaning governments are not managing available resources properly.