International History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

International History - Essay Example The widest description of civilization is however the definition of a more complex lifestyle that encompasses urban culture and practice of complicated activities such as farming and construction of complex structures. In doing such complex activities therefore indicate a state of sophisticated way of thinking, change of taste, and improvement of behavior. Civilized communities are now described by the way they live i.e. organized leadership (governments), literacy, social integration, economic coordination and other cultural characteristics. The general question of concern is why early civilization materialized along river valleys The answer to this question is that rivers provided a source of dependable livelihood throughout the year. As the old adage goes, water is life; rivers provided a supply of water for farming, for people's consumption and other domestic uses. Rivers also worked as micro climate regulation influencing vegetation, type of weather, natural features and topography besides the land around river is usually very fertile and hence encouraged farming (McEvedy, 2002 p.30). Whereas people appeared to be dependant on these rivers, there river stimulated innovations that lead to emergence of new and refined institutional organization, technology development and economic management. Civilization along river valleys was a self determining factor and no relations whatsoever to other rivers but had some similar characteristics. Some of the early river civilizations that have been described are along R. Nile, R. Indus, R. Tigris and R. Euphrates (McEvedy, 2002 p.34). Contrary to river valley civilization, barbarian civilization also emerged at the same time among groups of people that practiced nomadic pastoralist. Barbarism describes a situation that reduces civilization process due to communal disintegration caused by lack of industrial progression. Such societies lagged behind in technical development and were deemed low-grade compared to other communities. Some of communities that endured this civilization set back developed to become nomadic pastoralists and practiced free farming. The emergence of Nomadic pastoralist has been described to be a consequence of Neolithic Revolution. Domestication of animals and more so herbivores and farming, cleared more land and pastures, as a consequence, communities had to migrate to other areas in search for greener pastures (McEvedy 2002 p.38-40). Factors that contributed to such migrations included seasons of droughts, overpopulation, attacks from other hostile communities and search for water. Historic ally it has been ascertained that Nomadic Pastoralist lead to development of hostility among pastoral communities towards others and they have been feared a lot even today. Coercive-Agrarian Civilization The agrarian civilization begun with the river valley civilization and the major characteristics of this civilization were; invention of writing, organization of communities into empires and construction of buildings and monuments. Invention of Writing The earliest writings of late years Before Christ are not considered as writings but rather as symbols. The earliest symbols were used to communicate messages to people and their complexity gradually grew to include rows aligned and could bring to mind an intuition of a clear text. It is very hard