The Meaning of Being Human

Essay by silentwatcherUniversity, Bachelor's December 2008

download word file, 5 pages 0.0

“Here, then is the beginning of when it was decided to make man, and what must enter into the flesh of man was sought” (Tignor, 98).

Imagine you wake up one day to the sound not of your cell phone alarm but the sound of bleating sheep. No microwave to heat water, instead your water comes from a stream and your heat from wood collected a mile away, this was how you would have lived, early in 5000 BCE. Man’s transition into controlled food production and sedentary urban living close to five thousand years ago marks one of the most important events that have occurred in the evolution and survival of man. The purpose of this essay will be a discussion aiming to validate the following statement: Humans living in ancient agrarian and riverine civilizations were better placed and this allowed humans to develop their individual personalities and better withstand environmental risk factors.

Ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt and Harappa began life along the banks of rivers such as the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile and The Indus Valley (Tignor, 53). These civilizations house prime examples of complex societies such as Uruk and Saqarra. The cityscape laid the foundation stone for the development of religion, art, architecture, economics, but above all the catalyst for human innovation and creativity that led to social, political and economic revolution. According to Kevin Reilly author of Worlds of History, some of the changes that the urban revolution brought about included “particulars like writing and money and metallurgy to abstractions like ... visual acuity, and anonymity” (Reilly, 32).

The advent of food production enabled man’s move from a nomadic foraging society to a settled agricultural society as domestication of plants and animals enabled a greater reliability in food supply and an increased capacity to provide food...