Essay Example on Explain the importance of water to early Civilizations

Most of the early civilizations originated from rivers The Nile Tigris Euphrates the Indus and the Yellow River were all rivers where most of the ancient civilizations started to grow Early civilizations were located near rivers because the rivers contained fresh water This fresh water helped to develop agriculture Agriculture allowed civilizations to have a more stable population For instance the Nile River was one of the few rivers that had the most dependable annual flooding resulting in early agriculture was able to produce numerous crops The Egyptians eventually were able to withstand the flooding and created an irrigation system as well as canals to capture the water from the flood The Indus and Yellow river also flooded but it wasn't as predictable as the Nile Every time the Nile flooded it would leave a brown silt that was full of nutrients The bountiful sun and water meant that multiple crops could be raised and support an increasing population This increasing population caused the settlements to turn into huge cities and eventually create a government 

This record of this event allows the Sumerians to hide Enmerkar s failure resulting in a questionable ending Epics also help us in giving clues to the first settlements of ancient India as they kept no records or achievements Although the epics we look at for clues about the early Indian civilizations are off by thousands of years the epics probably preserve an older tradition Another example is how we pieced together and figured out how the story of Agga was written in striking distance of Gilgamesh s reign As the story of Agga was written in Sumerian the tablet must ve been recorded before the Sumerian language disappeared in 2000 BC being replaced by Akkadian In the Epic of Gilgamesh Gilgamesh was believed to have ruled around 2800 to 2500 BC Considering that history was told first then written later the written version seems to be written at a reasonable close time to Gilgamesh s reign Epic tales however should be taken with a grain of salt as they were written by scribes who were paid by the kings whose achievements they recorded which the scribes tended to tilt the stories in the king's favor However we can compare these epics to other accounts of battles won temples built and treaties to assemble together what events really happened in the ancient world