Human History/ Early Civilizations

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Human history was forever changed for the better with the emergence of civilizations in the four river valleys. It was a transformation in history due to the fact that these civilizations contributed many advancements. These advancements account for the basis of our modern-day culture.

There are certain factors that determine a civilization. Indicators of civilization are cities, some sort of political system, specialization of labor, class division, monumental building, record-keeping, long-distance trade, science, and arts. All four of the river valley cultures contained many if not all of these characteristics.

Similar to our modern society , the ancient river valley civilizations had record-keeping. Although today, our writing is not only used for keeping records, but for enjoyment and communication as well. The foundation of written communication however, came from the first river valley civilizations. The Mesopotamians used cuneiform which is a series of symbols. Hieroglyphics was the written language of the Egyptians.

The Indus valley used symbols for syllables and sounds, while the Chinese used a system of pictograms. Even now, there are so many varieties of written languages with each one being unique to its own language and different from all the others.

All of the river valley civilizations developed irrigation due to the flooding of the rivers they were situated near. Even though the Egyptians lived along the Nile, which was known for it's yearly, steady flooding, they still used irrigation as a tool in their farming.

Irrigation is as big a part of farming today as it was thousands of years ago. Farmers have this advancement thank to the ingeniousness of the people of the ancient river valley cultures. The technology of metallurgy is used today in many different fields from jewelry to cookware to furniture to even houses. Although metals were used mainly for tools...