Topic: Comparing and Contrasting ancient China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt,
River Valley Civilization:
Silk, hieroglyphics, polytheism, architects, and even plumbing; what do these simple words mean to the world and to some of the world’s most important historical civilizations to ever exist. These words may seem straightforward, easily understandable, and maybe even seem to have very little to do with world history, but sadly that is a false statement. These simple words that do not mean much to us now, but once long ago helped civilizations grow and culture to expand across the eastern hemisphere, which lead to the reaches of the rest of the world. These so called unimportant words set the atmosphere for civilization hundreds of years to come. These daunting words all had to do with civilizations from long ago, these unpromising words all helped the River Valley Civilizations, four of the greatest civilizations to eternally etch there names and importance into our life, but more importantly our past. Though the real question now isn’t how these now unforgettable words inspired and assist ancient Indus (India and Pakistan), Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China (the four River Valley Civilization), but how these everlasting civilizations differed and were still able to survive so close together; also how comparable they are, to each other, yet these small relations between each other decide serval victories and down falls that the world will ever know.
All of these victories and failures were all influenced by several occurrence, one being how much the people of the civilization were willing to fight for the home, another one being the effort that the civilizations placed into these battles, but the most important one that had the greatest effected on these victories and defeats is the government that controlled these civilizations at the time. India, China, Mesopotamia, and Egypt’s government are all considered different, but technically are all similar as well. Looking back into the past, you are able to see what government once ruled over so many places at the same time. China’s government was made of three dynasties, “a family of kings”, who ruled over the land during the period of the River Valley Civilizations. Egypt during this same period had the government of Pharaohs, kings who had immense power and seemed god like. The government of Mesopotamia was kings who each controlled city-states; they became kings by being important and strong military leaders during the time of wars. India’s government was made up of a several dynasties, which all at one point in time provided the civilization with a hope of a stronger leader and ruler. Comparing these civilizations, you may notice that all the governments of these older civilizations had kings as there leaders, but the difference is how the kings gained their dominance and how they used it. Also, what they were known for in each civilization. Actually looking at the government again you may also noticed that India and China at the time basically had the same type of government and the only real difference between the two were what the rulers did with their powers.
Along with comparing the civilization’s government comes each of their social classes. Kings were at the top of the list for Mesopotamia, and then came priest, nobles, and merchants. For Egypt, the social class started with Pharaohs, then peasant, and slaves at the bottom of the so called popularity stack. Kings, the rich, merchants and the slaves was the way that the social class for India mounded together, while for China nobles were on top, then priest, and slaves once again at the bottom. As you may see when comparing these civilizations, the kings of all the civilization, with the exception of China, were at the top of the social classes, while slaves were at the bed of all the class with the exception of Mesopotamia. The difference is that all most all the River Valley civilizations had the same members in their social classes, of course with some being higher than others and some not even being on the list at all.
Your social class was not just important to the government, but it was also important to the jobs. The social class was decided mostly by your job specialization. Each of these civilizations had their own jobs that their citizens would qualify to be known as a specialist. For Mesopotamia, their civilians specialize in agriculture, or better know as farming now, metal working, architecture, which was shared through the construction of a village, and the building of Ziggurats. Egypt also shared similar job specializations such as farmers. They also had merchants, artist, and builders. India had architects, priest, farmers, merchant, and scholars, while China had farmers, priest, architects, merchants, and scholars. Comparing the job specialization of all the River Valley civilization lets you really see how much they had in common. They all had very similar jobs, the only real difference between the jobs are how the workers went to doing and completing the task ahead of them.
