Hist West Civil to 1500

Discussion Board 1: Cradles of Civilization

"Compare and contrast Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization"

The Mesopotamian civilization was centered around two major rivers Tigris and Euphrates. All though this particular part of the world did not have abundant natural resources, when the Sumerians developed its irrigations systems stemming of the two rivers they now had a unique fertile landscape (The Fertile Crescent) (Frankforter, 14). They had a population that was multi-ethnic and multilingual. (Frankforter, 15). The knowledge of the earliest Sumerians come to us form archaeology, although we do have a more broaden sence of there history once its people took on writing (Cunieform) around the end of the 4th millennium B.C.E. With that we now understand there Culture, History, Religion and Social behavior in a whole new light. The Mesopotamian cities had very complex societies with an abundance of different lifestyles such as Artists, Merchants, Government officials and Farmers. Which in turn they all contributed to a very complicated urban economical system. The People of that area had an abundant stock of grain that they use to trade for resource that were not naturally from that part of the world. They used these new and sometimes rare raw materials to make jewelry, works of art and garments. (Frakforter, 16-20) The Egyptian civilization as the Sumer's the Egyptians centered there cities along a river, the Nile. The Nile was enriched the area around it so much it needed little to no help from the people to meet their needs. evidence of Egyptians domesticating sheep, cattle, barley and wheat date back to 5000 B.C.E. although agriculture may not have been very popular until after 3500 B.C.E. The Nile also provided a very easy way to communicate with neighboring towns in the area (Frankforter, 24). Like the Sumer's Egyptian’s also developed its own writing systems. Hieroglyph came first and rapidly evolved into there own script with a little help from the...