Rise of the First Civilization

Han Zhang

After the Paleolithic and Mesolithic ages humans race started to settle down through out the world. The natural environment of the river valleys set stage for the first civilization to emerge after thousands years of hunting and gathering. This is not a sudden leap but a gradual process as the domestication of animals and plants start to arise and spread with the regions. Above all the discovery and usage of grain-centered agriculture proved the foundation for the first civilization, in the Middle East. The process of advancement in agriculture especially around the river valley gradually replaced the hunter-gather economy and enable population to rise and cities to form. The surplus generated from the food production enabled specialist of non-food production occupation to form. This enabled complex social institutions to arise and generated the societies that histories termed civilizations. The natural environment serves as the primary reasons for the rise of the first civilization. The retreat of the icecap from central Europe made environment suitable for mankind to flourish in the Middle East. The growth of the seedbearing plants not only served as a food resources for humans but a critical production mechanism as they innovate the food production technologies. The grain filed was discovered and men began to produce enormous food supply that overwhelmingly surpasses the hunting mechanism. The advancement in

agriculture technology transform the human society in the river valley not only because it displace the hunting from community life but also enable multiplication of populations in a relatively small regions. In other words it dramatically increase human density so that interactions between individuals and groups helped specialization of labor and complex organizations to form.1 Despite the change of the nature of the work increase the workload for man, women was able to produce more off spring than the in the hunter economy because of the decreased burden of child when moving. The nature of the agriculture work also encouraged the population to rise as it raises the production of the land. Human were able to alternate the natural environment around them and even the local ecology. The agriculture development also shifted the gender relation in that men began to dominate the society as their increased productivity and less burden to child bearing. One of the most important examples of this is the Mesopotamia civilization, the Sumerians, in the Middle East. The increase and clustering of population in the river valleys enabled mass labor power to perform complex activities such as monument building and irrigation work that is never seen in the past. Temple

1 William H. Mcnell, (1991). The Rise of the West: a History of the Human community. Chicago: The university of Chicago Press. (P13)

communities serve as an organization for the famers and created foundations for the civilization to form. The rise of priest, on the other hand, as leaders for the

complex human society was one of the examples of the specialists arises from the early civilizations. These specialists supported from the surplus of the food production system served as the creators, sustainers, and organizers of the civilized life.2 The cities emerged and political states were gradually formed in the process. The rise of the first civilization saw the transforming of social structures to a hierarchy society from the previous egalitarian society. Bureaucracy law and professional armies were developed. The extensive network of trade gave rise to an unprecedented merchant class. Writing and art of the Sumerians also served as a landmark for the development of civilization in Mesopotamia as they enabled the creation and flow of culture between generations.3 In words, the rise of food production in the form of crop cultivation and animal husbandry gave rise to dense human populations, stored food surpluses and feeding of non-farming specialists. These lead to complex social institutions as cities and state as well as art and culture to form. The transformation from hunting to intensive agrarian society, after thousands years of hunting, created the first river valley civilization in Mesopotamia.
2 Ibid: (p36) 3 Ibid: (P52,53)