Geography has had a dramatic influence on the lives of people in ancient civilizations. The Indus River Valley and Chinese Civilizations are both examples of societies that used their geography to help them as civilizations. These civilizations were able to develop based on the resources they had, and were able to become complex civilizations by irrigating floods and devising early plumbing systems. Geography had a dramatic influence on the lives of people in the Indus River Valley.
Primarily centered along the Indus and the Punjab region, the civilization extended into the Ghaggar-Hakra River valley and the Ganges-Yamuna Doab, encompassing most of what is now Pakistan, as well as extending into the westernmost states of modern-day India, southeastern Afghanistan, and the easternmost part of Balochistan, Iran. People began farming in 6000 B. C in Western India. The geography consisted of rich agricultural lands being surrounded by highlands, desert, and ocean.
The floods of the Indus River sometimes provided droughts and other times over flows.Monsoon rains, which were seasonal also, provided hardship for the farmers because they had strong winds sometimes. Deposits of rich soil and silt were deposited when there was flooding and they were unpredictable. Some of the world’s tallest mountains were in the North. The Indus River is between the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountains.
These two mountain ranges have the highest mountain peaks and border rivers. Streams and rivers form the Indus River run into the Arabian Sea. The Indus River Valley had very fertile soil to have good farming.The fertile soil is like the soil of the Fertile Crescent and Nile River Valley. In the spring the snow melts in the mountains and flows into the Indus River.
The Indus River brings silt from the mountains with rich minerals and floods also bring the rich minerals. The mountains blocked the moisture from the monsoons. The Indus River people built irrigation canals and it helped make less devastating floods. The Cidal was a fortress. The canal also provided fresh water. The invented plumbing and had grid like cities and they were also relatively peaceful.
Geography has also had a dramatic influence on the lives of people in Shang and Zhou dynasties in China. China is surrounded by they yellow river (Huang He) in the North and the Yangtze found in the South. China is considered very isolated from the other civilizations. China also has the Taklimakan desert and the Gobi desert, Himalayan Mountains as well as the Tibetan plateau. The geographical barriers served to isolate the Chinese people from advanced agrarian societies in other parts of Asia.The Northern Frontier became one of the great fault lines of conflict in Asia as Chinese armies attempted to protect precious farmlands from marauding peoples from beyond the frontier.
The Shang Dynasty was a predominantly agricultural society ruled by an aristocratic class whose major occupation was war. The Taklimakan desert served as a barrier of protection for many years. People were afraid of the desert and the meaning, “He who enters never leaves. ” The Himalayas served as cultural isolation because the Chinese couldn’t really socialize with other civilizations like the Indus River Valley.The different Chinese civilizations differ from that of the Indus River Valley because they Indus people were able to trade easier as well as socialize. The Chinese wouldn’t have been able to trade without the Khyber Pass which was a natural “highway” in which the Chinese built a big gate and it allowed for them to charge tax when others came in to trade.
This meant that they had to have kept records of things as well as developed a system of writing which everyone would be able to understand.The Emperor hired people to work to make canals and irrigation systems for the yellow river. The yellow river could either overflow or sometimes not flow enough which could lead to a drought. In conclusion, geography has had a major impact on the lives of people in ancient civilizations. The Indus River Valley and Chinese Civilizations are common examples of societies with the purpose of using their geography to help them as civilizations.
These civilizations were able to widen and flourish based on the resources they had and were able to become sophisticated civilizations.
