First Civilizations

The first civilizations took place in the Ancient Era in 3500 B.C. The three places that this chapter mostly looked at were Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Indus Valley. Civilizations are bigger centrally organized places. City states are smaller and have their own government. Egypt and Indus Valley were civilizations while Mesopotamia was a city state. Mesopotamia and Egypt had a lot of similar qualities. They both showed to have social hierarchy. That is when people start competing each other for wealth, status and power and that creates different levels of hierchary. We know there was social hierarchy because of the pharaohs and pyramids. The biggest problem Mesopotamians had was their water was very unpredictable and out of control. Egypt had more stability because they were able to figure out when the rivers were going to flood so they had more time to relax and had a lot of free time. Mesopotamians were constantly working trying to feed themselves. The Indus Valley civilization was located where India is today. There is no evidence that there was social hierarchy and that is really unheard of. What is really amazing is they had created urban planning. They literally mapped out where they should build things rather then just random building. Indus valley people creating flushing toilets and were able to swim and bathe. The ancient era is when people began to write because they had more sophisticated technology. Unfortunately we do not understand The Indus Valley's written language so we have not been able to decipher it which makes it hard for us to fully understand how they lived. They make have even had social hierarchy, but we would not know because we can not read their writings. 
In the Americas they did not have strong agriculture because they did not have the right animals to help pull things. Because of this they had much smaller civilizations.

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