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Agriculture And The Rise Of Civilization In The Middle East And Africa
As you have seen, one reason that civilization first appeared in the
Middle East was because agriculture had taken hold in this region. Over many
centuries agriculture became more common and productive in the Middle East; it
began to create the conditions for further innovations - including
civilization. But the first civilization also required an additional set of
stimuli, the new inventions and organizations that had taken shape around 4000
B.C.
Much time elapsed between the development of agriculture and the rise of
civilization in the Middle East and many other places. The successful
agricultural communities that formed were based primarily on very localized
production, which normally sustained a population despite recurrent disasters
caused by bad weather or harvest problems. Localized agriculture did not
consistently yield the kind of surplus that would allow specializations among
the population, and therefore it could not generate civtlization.
marauders, help explain why most early agricultural peoples settled in village
communities, rather than isolated farms. Villages that grouped several hundred
people constituted the characteristic pattern of residence in almost all
agricultural societies from Neolithic days to our own times. Some big rivers
encouraged elaborate irrigation projects that could channel water in virtually
assured quantities to vast stretches of land. To create larger irrigation
projects along major rivers such as Tigris-Euphrates or the Nile, large gangs
of laborers had to be assembled. Further, regulations had to assure that users
along the river and in the villages near the river's source would have equal
access to the water supply. This implied an increase in the scale of political
and economic organization. A key link between the advantages of irrigation and
the gradual emergence of civilization was that irrigated land produced
surpluses with greater certainty and required new kinds of organization.
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