How did the development of agriculture affect cultural developments in different river civilizations?
What will be an ideal response?
A. Egypt
1. food sources and useful plants complemented what farmers could grow in the irrigated lands to the south
2. marshlands, birds, animals, fish, and plants clustered for the gatherer and hunter
3. irrigation created little microclimates
4. cultural developments
a. economy devoted to everyday abundance to providing basic nutrition for the population
b. surplus gathered to guard against hard times
c. courtly luxuries came from trade, raids, and conquest
B. Indus Valley and the Harappan
1. fed by the Indus and Saraswati rivers but their unpredictability eventually caused the Harappan civilization to disappear
2. farmers here could grow two crops annually
3. cultural developments
a. the basis of its wealth was the surplus of its agriculture
b. territorial expansion was the Harrapan solution to feeding its increasingly dense population in the heartland
c. Harappan art is engraved on seals used to mark trading goods with naturalistic representations of animals
C. Mesopotamia
1. an environment more violent and more hostile than those of Egypt and Harappa
2. summers were too harsh and dry to produce food for the early cities, which had to rely on winter crops of wheat and barley, onions, chickpeas, and sesame
3. cultural developments
a. gods and goddesses that represented nature were celebrated
b. digging raised dwellings above the flood and diverted and conserved water
c. farmers throughout the region were using plows drawn by oxen
d. they were necessarily resourceful people who made ships in a country with no timber, worked masterpieces in bronze in a part of the world where no metal could be found, built fabulous cities without stone by baking mud into bricks, and dammed rivers
D. China
1. relatively isolated by long distances and physical barriers but developed similarly
2. the flood coaxes it into amazing fertility but its ferocity and unpredictability needs careful management, with dikes to stem the flood, ditches to channel it, and artificial basins to conserve water against drought
3. could not sustain a rice–eating population so grew millet and soya beans
4. cultural developments
a. rice could only become a staple when people colonized new areas
b. colonists and conquerors probably combined with other communities where similar changes were already in progress, in a slow process of expansion on many levels
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