AP World History

Characteristic
Applies to Egypt
Applies to Mesopotamia
Access to a River Valley for necessary water and silt. ✔ ✔
Reliable and predictable flood. ✔

Civilization based on cities.

✔
Agricultural surpluses to support specialized laborers.
✔
✔
Transportation on at least part of river possible due to favorable winds. ✔

Floods suddenly without warning.

✔
Consistently maintained canals are necessary for water drain-off.

✔
Cooperation with nature.
✔

Civilization based on cities.

✔
Country of peasant villages except for royal court. ✔

Lack of urbanization. ✔

Communal labor – cooperation needed to keep society going.

✔
Religion encouraged civic loyalty – citizenship responsibilities due to taxes, record keeping and rituals. ✔
Crowded, dense cities with clear division of labor and class.

✔
Cities indicate no middle class – predominantly wealthy and poor. ✔

Absolute equality among the classes/occupations of people in the city.

✔
Relatively prosperous middle class

✔
Capital not enclosed by walls or canals ✔

Have large important temple complexes ✔ ✔
What truly enables civilization to develop is the need for great natural resources, what I find that both Mesopotamia and Egypt had in common was they were close to the water. This helped and benefited them in a lot of ways. A water source helped them form irrigation systems so they could grow their own food and make a profit from it. Water and the rivers were also a means of traveling. If it were not for the water source close to both civilizations they would not have been able to get around the world for trade.

When I tried to look for characteristics that are critical for a society to become a civilization this website: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_characteristics_are_critical_for_society_to_become_civilizations this website gave the simple answer of
“G = Geography
R = Religion
A = Art
S = Social Structure
P = Political Hierarchy
E = Economics
D = Demographics
I = Intellectual
T = Technology”
Which I can’t agree enough with because it is very correct all these ideas and subjects were covered in chapter one and are what made those societies into civilization.

Some of the comparisons of Mesopotamia and Egypt civilizations are both had access to river for water and slit. Had agriculture surplus and large complexes for their temples and place of worship. The biggest difference is that Egypt was they had reliable and predictable floods while Mesopotamia had unpredictable floods ruining their crops and caused them to create a civilization based on cities. Egypt did not have much of middle class just a drastic difference between their classes which were either rich or poor, while Mesopotamia had a large middle class. Egypt was mainly based off on villages and farming while Mesopotamia had a civilization based on cities.

The biggest reason why the development of writing is important in the history of river-valley civilizations is for a means of communication. If it were not for written rules, regulations, laws or taxes none of the civilizations would be as prosperous as they had been. Writing kept civilization organized and prevented them from cheating one another with laws and taxes. Communication was also made. Having writing helped them write down all the laws in one place which kept things fair between citizens. Also if it weren’t for their writing we wouldn’t even be a hundred percent sure they even existed. We were able to encode their alphabet and learn of what happened back then.

Jessica although you did not have access to the textbook (same situation for me) sounds like a great response. I wish I had elaborated more on Mesopotamia and Egypt’s cultural and religious difference, but you spoke of it well. I think it’s really amazing that the ideas which we have sophisticated and up scaled with technology were created so long ago and simple means of survival. When I say that I am mostly talking about the irrigation systems and traveling with rivers and realizing that the wind would benefit in taking them to other places.