Early Civilizations

Humans

• What did we as a society need to survive?– Air– Water– Food– Shelter– Clothing– Love

Nomads

• A member of a people who have no permanent abode and travel from place to place

• Earliest known humans were nomads• Why travel?

Nomads

• In groups discuss…– Why would people travel so much?– What type of life would this be? Describe…

– Be ready to discuss in whole group.

Nomads

• Traveled to follow the hunt, when food was gone you traveled on.

• Lived in make shift houses, tents.• Kept to families or small communities.

• What would cause these type of people to finally find a permanent settlement?

Nomads

• People learned to grow crops.• Where would you settle down?

– Close to a water source.

5 earliest known settlements.

• Tigris-Euphrates River, Iran (Garden of Eden)• Nile River, Egypt• Ganges River, India• Yellow River, China• Amazon River, South America

Your Turn

• In your groups, pretend that you were one of the early nomads that discovered how to grow crops and have settled in one of these five locations. Now what do you do? Now what happens for civilization?

• As a group develop your own civilization. Name it, design it, etc.

• Be prepared to share with class.

Civilization begins…• Steps to Civilization:

• 1. Irrigation Agriculture • 2. City States • 3. Temples, Priests, Organized Religion • 4. Development of Writing Systems • 5. Citadel, Royal Palaces, Kings & Bureaucracies • 6. Organized Warfare, creation of Empires • 7. Social stratification, classes • 8. Increase in trade, commerce, artisans• 9. Monumental architecture

• City State: a state consisting of a sovereign city and its dependencies. Among the most famous are the great independent cities of the ancient world, Athens and Sparta

• Families become communities, which become cities

Temples/Religion

Family beliefs become more practiced and shared

Answers questions to life and why things are the way they are

Gives hope?

Temples• Ancient Mesopotamia (Sumerians) • Fertile Crescent– Each city state built a temple to their special god.– The temple was built on a pyramid-shaped tower

called a ziggurat.– From the wrapping terraces around the ziggurat

people could watch ceremonies for their god.

Writing System

Have to be able to communicate.Makes things easier in life.With communication comes the development of

a writing system.Oral stories now written. Religious texts now

created.

Government

-Creation of Government over the growing populations. People looking for leadership.

-Kings and Queens-Theocracy: a government by divine authority-Some cases religion is tied into kingdom

leaders.

Organized Warfare

Expansion of city states.War/Battles over enemies to expand land.Add slaves and add people to your way of life.

Classes

• Caste System: India– People are born into, marryand die in caste

Accept caste so thatsociety will not go intochaos

Classes

• Class system: Egypt

Classes

• Ancient Mesopotamia Class system• King/Priest• Upper Class: property owners• Middle Class: Skilled workers, merchants,

farmers• Slaves

Trade

• Over the river….more like down/up the river• Societies started trading up/down rivers– Shared goods and beliefs

– The Mediterranean Sea became a huge trading route for ancient Greece.

Monumental architecture

City of Petra

Abu Simbel