Скачать или смотреть The 6 Earliest Human Civilizations | Exploring Ancient History | Info Bites

The 6 Earliest Human Civilizations | Exploring Ancient History | Info Bites

Modern civilizations exist on every continent except Antarctica, but most researchers believe that civilization began between 4000 and 3000 B.C. in Iraq, Egypt, India, China, Peru, and Mexico.
Starting with Mesopotamia, these sophisticated cultures developed cultural and technological breakthroughs that survive today. “A great many of the details of modern life, not just in the Middle East and the West, but across the world, have origins that go back for thousands of years to the ancient cultures in their respective regions,” says Amanda Podany, author and history professor emeritus at California State Polytechnic University.
Here are six early civilizations and their legacies.
1. Mesopotamia, 4000-3500 B.C.
Mesopotamia—Iraq, Kuwait, and Syria—is the birthplace of civilization. Despite near-constant warfare, the Tigris-Euphrates culture made significant advances in reading, astronomy, agriculture, law, mathematics, architecture, and more. Babylon, Ashur, and Akkad were the first urban cities.
“Mesopotamia is the earliest urban literate civilization on the globe—and the Sumerians, who established the civilization, established the ground rules,” says Kenneth Harl, author, consultant, and Tulane University history professor emeritus. “Those who can research and write run civilization and everyone else does the grunt work.”
The Code of Hammurabi was written in cuneiform. The base 60 numeric system spawned the 60-second minute, 60-minute hour, and 360-degree circle. Babylonian astrology first divided the year into 12 periods named after constellations—what the Greeks would later call the zodiac.
Persia invaded Mesopotamia in 539 B.C. Centuries of instability followed.
“Within the three millennia in which ancient Mesopotamia flourished, innumerable individual kingdoms came and went, and a few empires rose and fell for various reasons,” says Podany, author of the upcoming Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East. But at its core, the civilization was recognizably the same from roughly 3500 BC to 323 BC—and, many would argue, beyond that. The culture was stable but the territory rarely unified.”
2. Ancient Egypt, 3100 B.C.
Ancient Egypt, one of the most idealized civilizations, ruled for over 3,000 years. The civilization, which once stretched from Syria to Sudan along the fertile Nile River, is most renowned for its pyramids, tombs, mausoleums, and mummification of corpses.
Empires of the Steppes: How the Steppe Nomads Forged the Modern World author Harl argues Egypt's utilization of labor for architectural projects like the pyramids was unmatched. He thinks the capacity to gather 100,000 men to build the huge pyramid in 2600 B.C. is unmatched.
He adds that Egyptians excelled in agriculture and medicine. They also created beautiful sculpture and art.
Egyptians left enormous writing and mathematics systems. The pyramids and other constructions were designed using the cubit, a forearm-length measurement. They created the 24-hour day and 365-day calendar. They developed the hieroglyphic graphic writing system and the ink-on-papyrus system. Alexander the Great captured the civilization in 332 B.C.
3. Ancient India, 3300 B.C.
Harl states Hinduism was developed in ancient India, where religion, literature, and architecture were valued. Reincarnation and the birthright caste system are still taught in the Upanishads, revered Hindu texts.
The Indus River Valley Civilization (modern-day India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan) was not war-torn like other ancient civilizations. Instead, historians and archaeologists point to sophisticated city planning with grids, homogeneous baked-brick dwellings, and drainage, sewage, and water delivery systems.

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