What Do Textbooks Normally Do to the River Valley Civilizations?
Learning Objective
- Explain why early civilizations arose on the banks of rivers
Key Points
- Rivers were attractive locations for the starting time civilizations because they provided a steady supply of drinking water and game, made the land fertile for growing crops, and allowed for easy transportation.
- Early river civilizations were all hydraulic empires that maintained ability and control through exclusive control over admission to water. This organisation of government arose through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized hierarchy.
- Hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government, since changes in ruling were normally in personnel, but not in the structure of government.
Terms
Fertile Crescent
A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Southwest asia, and the Nile Valley and Nile Delta of northeast Africa. Often called the cradle of civilisation.
Hydraulic empire
A social or governmental construction that maintains power through exclusive control of h2o access.
Caste
A form of social stratification characterized by endogamy (hereditary transmission of a lifestyle). This lifestyle often includes an occupation, ritual status in a bureaucracy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.
Water crisis
At that place is non enough fresh, make clean water to meet local need.
Water shortage
Water is less bachelor due to climatic change, pollution, or overuse.
Neolithic Revolution
Also called the Agricultural Revolution, this was the wide-calibration transition of homo cultures from existence hunter-gatherers to beingness settled agriculturalists.
Water stress
Difficulty in finding fresh water, or the depletion of available water sources.
The Get-go Civilizations
The first civilizations formed on the banks of rivers. The about notable examples are the Aboriginal Egyptians, who were based on the Nile, the Mesopotamians in the Fertile Crescent on the Tigris/Euphrates rivers, the Ancient Chinese on the Yellow River, and the Ancient Bharat on the Indus. These early civilizations began to form effectually the fourth dimension of the Neolithic Revolution (12000 BCE).Rivers were attractive locations for the first civilizations considering they provided a steady supply of drinking water and made the land fertile for growing crops. Moreover, goods and people could be transported hands, and the people in these civilizations could fish and chase the animals that came to drink h2o. Additionally, those lost in the wilderness could return to civilization by traveling downstream, where the major centers of human population tend to concentrate.
The Nile River and Delta. Most of the Aboriginal Egyptian settlements occurred along the northern part of the Nile, pictured in this satellite image taken from orbit past NASA.
Hydraulic Empires
Though each civilization was uniquely different, nosotros can see common patterns amongst these beginning civilizations since they were all based effectually rivers. Most notably, these early civilizations were all hydraulic empires. A hydraulic empire (likewise known as hydraulic despotism, or water monopoly empire) is a social or governmental construction which maintains ability through exclusive control over water access. This system of government arises through the need for alluvion command and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy. This political structure is commonly characterized by a organization of hierarchy and control based around class or caste. Power, both over resources (nutrient, water, energy) and a means of enforcement, such as the war machine, are vital for the maintenance of command. Most hydraulic empires be in desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation. The only hydraulic empire to exist in Africa was nether the Ajuran Land near the Jubba and Shebelle Rivers in the 15th century CE.Karl Baronial Wittfogel, the German scholar who start developed the notion of the hydraulic empire, argued in his book, Oriental Despotism (1957), that strong government control characterized these civilizations because a particular resource (in this example, river water) was both a central part of economic processes and environmentally limited. This fact made decision-making supply and demand easier and allowed the establishment of a more complete monopoly, and also prevented the use of alternative resources to recoup. However, information technology is also important to annotation that complex irrigation projects predated states in Madagascar, United mexican states, China and Mesopotamia, and thus information technology cannot exist said that a central, limited economic resources necessarily mandates a potent centralized bureaucracy. According to Wittfogel, the typical hydraulic empire government has no trace of an independent aristocracy—in contrast to the decentralized bullwork of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal authorities. Popular revolution in such a state was very difficult; a dynasty might die out or be overthrown by force, but the new authorities would differ very picayune from the old 1. Hydraulic empires were usually destroyed by foreign conquerors.
Water Scarcity Today
Access to water is yet crucial to modern civilizations; water scarcity affects more than than 2.8 billion people globally. Water stress is the term used to describe difficulty in finding fresh h2o or the depletion of available water sources. Water shortage is the term used when water is less available due to climate change, pollution, or overuse. Water crisis is the term used when at that place is not enough fresh, clean water to meet local need. H2o scarcity may be physical, meaning there are inadequate water resources available in a region, or economic, meaning governments are not managing available resource properly. The United nations Evolution Programme has constitute that water scarcity by and large results from the latter event.
Sources
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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldcivilization/chapter/river-valley-civilizations/
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