Ancient World: Civilizations and Religion Thousands of years ago, Ancient River Civilizations were thriving. At the time, they were like Paris, France, London, England or New York, New York; they were the places everyone wanted to be. These river civilizations established farming, formal religious rituals, governments, and writing and with all of these put together, they eventually became popular cities that created technology that made life much easier. You might have heard of many of these well known ancient civilizations such as: Mesopotamia,
Egypt, India, and China. None of these civilizations would have been known if they hadn’t made use of the technology and ways of living they developed. Ancient Mesopotamia, located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, is one of the many well known river civilizations. Ancient Mesopotamia consisted of city states including Assyria, Babylon, and many others. According to Document #1 , at around BBC, Assyrian physicians came up with the brilliant idea of using bandages to reduce swelling and to heal wounds. Might this be where the creation of “Band-Aids” started?
It’s always a possibility; the Ancient Mesopotamia created this thousands of years ago and we kept the invention growing because it worked. With the creation of the bandage, the Mesopotamia gained some thrill points in the area of medicine. The idea that was probably thought of as absurd eventually ended up being a technology that everybody uses to prevent wounds from becoming worse than what they start as. Bandages are still being used and updated in the 21st century. Imagine bandages in the next hundred years! Bandages weren’t the only things Mesopotamia could boast about creating! Document #3 mentions that in
Babylon, between 600 and BBC, Manipulators, king of Babylon, started developing the building of the Great Ramparts of Babylon. However, by the time Unpopularity’s reign was ending, he had not yet finished the Great Ramparts. So his eldest son, Nebuchadnezzar, finished the Ramparts for his father. The finished Ramparts had a moat, 2 strong walls made of burnt brick circling the area, and fences 2. These Ramparts provided a type of safety barrier for the Babylonians. It protected them from the outside world; it was almost impossible from anyone to get in, and unless you knew a passageway, it was hard to get out.
The next River civilization is Ancient Egypt. Egypt, located near the Nile River, was well known for many things. These things included their new means of travel, their process of mummification, their pyramids, and many more! If you’ve read the Kane Chronicles Series by Rick Ordain, you would already have some background information in mind about Ancient Egypt. However, in case you haven’t read the book, the picture in Document #2 shows that when it came to transportation across the Nile, navigation was tough.
Not many people were able to get through the Niles cataracts, rocks, rapids and waterfalls and hill they were traveling across the Nile, things happened and they were never seen again. So, the Egyptians created a boat called a Baroque. The Baroque helped travel across the Nile become easier. Baroque’s were stronger than most other boats, so crashing into a rock once or twice didn’t cause much damage. The Ancient Egyptians were also huge on domesticating plants and animals. They domesticated as much as cows down to the papyrus plant that they used to draw this primary source!
The domesticated animals mainly helped with transportation on land and with food. The animals with higher populations could easily be killed to make food the same way we kill pigs, chicken, and cows to eat. The bigger animals such as cows could help carry things necessary to make even the smallest voyage into the desert. That’s not the only thing Egyptians are known for! While the creation of the baroque bought Egypt thrill points in travel and the domestication of plants and animals bought the same in farming, the Ancient civilization’s most known skill was mummification.
Document #4 describes the process of mummification. First, the embalmers, also known as the people who mummify the body, take out all of the body’s organs and store them in separate Jars. Each lung gets a big Jar, the heart gets a medium sized Jar, the eyes are removed and put in smaller Jars, so on and so forth. The embalmers then slice open the corpse and fill the stomach with spices and herbs to make sure the body doesn’t smell extremely bad after time. They then sew the body back together and put the body in salt for 70 days to mummify.
After the 70 days, they wrap the corpse in bandages bonded by gum and put the body in a caskets. This entire process was done to King Tutu, and other pharaohs of the time. The mummification process bought experience to the Ancient Egyptians on medicine and preservation. Ancient India is another river civilization that advanced over the creation and use of new technologies. Located in the Indus River Valley, India created very unique towns in comparison to most other river civilizations.
As shown in Document #6, Ancient India was an urban area with lots of streets and houses. Ancient India back then was similar to the Urbana of New York currently. There were houses from 1 story to 3 stories made of bricks, and these houses all had yards, Just like most houses in neighborhoods do. Each house was circled by a fence and right out of those fences we streets that led to other houses or other places. The ancient Indus civilization also had drainage systems in every house that led to the main street where there was lots of room to store the civilization’s waste.
I personally believe that the Indus River civilization was the most similar to America today because of the fact that their cities were so urbanize. Ancient China, located between the Yanking and Yellow rivers is the last major Ancient River civilization. China is well known today for exporting the majority of America’s goods. However, according to Document #7, during the 1 lath century BC, China was big with silk. If you’ve read Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park, it tells a story of a young Chinese girl that does a project relating to the silk creating rates of silkworms in Mulberry trees.
This was called sericulture. In Ancient China, Chinese people domesticated silkworms to create tons of silk. They eventually ended up weaving that silk into clothing and embroidery and the Chinese Civilization started trading the silk the same way they trade goods today. The trading of the silk clothing ended up making the civilization richer and richer day by day! Silk wasn’t the only thing China had! According to Document #5, in the bronze age, the Chinese River Civilization suddenly doubled in strength.
During this time, they created horse drawn chariots, a new form of writing, their own calendar, and social classes. With all of these elements, China finally became a full civilization with technologies supporting it. To conclude, the four Ancient River Valleys started off as nothing, but eventually, with the help of technology, Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China all ended up being lots more than what they started off as. The increase of the usage of cosmologies in the civilizations really helped them thrive as a whole and become the civilizations we know them as today.