These rivers along with climate and vegetation shaped the development of the early river valley civilizations. However, while people of these civilizations were dependent on the rivers for food, the rivers also inspired new ideas, technological, and economic innovations and developments. This opened up ways for travel and to explore, it also offered the opportunity for growth and new beginnings. Agriculture played an important part in their growth, and they found that by staying in one place, this would ensure family survival while keeping them together. Areas where agriculture grew and civilization prospered the communities productions did as well enabling them to move into cities and expand. This in turn led them to develop and advance into so many different areas, and the more they developed the more they grew, with that they realized they needed to secure and to protect their Family, property and wealth from unwanted outsiders , and in order to this they needed to establish law and order.
Mesopotamia left a number of important cultural legacies for Western civilization. One of these legacies was various legal codes developed by a succession of Mesopotamian rulers. Most notably as Hammurabi. Early civilization instilled