The first civilisations
History · Key Stage 2 · The School
Where cities began
The first cities grew in four river valleys, but not at the same time. The Tigris and Euphrates, in Mesopotamia, which is roughly modern Iraq. The Nile, in Egypt. The Indus, in what is now Pakistan and India. And the Yellow River, in China. Mesopotamia and Egypt came first, by about 3000 BCE. The big Indus cities and the Yellow River cities came later. Rivers gave three things at once: water to drink, fertile silt for crops, and a way to move goods. Farming came first. Cities were what farming made possible.
What a civilisation needs
The key to all of it is a food SURPLUS. That means growing more than the farmers themselves eat. A surplus frees people to do something other than farm. They can be builders, priests, soldiers, potters or scribes. From that can follow specialised work, and then trade, laws, taxes and rulers. Scholars say all the earliest civilisations depended on farmers who made a surplus.
Writing
Writing appears in Mesopotamia around 3300 BCE. Its first use was not poetry or law. It was accounts: goods coming in and going out, and who dealt with them. It changed history in the most literal sense. Before writing, we have only objects to go on. After writing, we have people telling us in their own words. The line between PREHISTORY and HISTORY is drawn at writing. It fell at different times in different places.
Were the first civilisations in a queue, or side by side? Test one year, 2500 BCE. BCE years count down, so a bigger number means longer ago. A civilisation was going in 2500 BCE if it began before then and ended after. Sumer was made of city-states. Each was a city that ruled the land around it. Sumer's early city-state time ran from about 2900 to 2350 BCE. That began before 2500 and ended after, so Sumer is in. Egypt's Old Kingdom, also called the Age of the Pyramids, ran from about 2700 to 2200 BCE. Egypt is in. The Indus Valley had planned cities, such as Mohenjo-daro, laid out on a grid. Its most developed time ran from about 2600 to 1900 BCE. The Indus Valley is in. All three pass. In 2500 BCE all three were going at once. On a timeline they look like a queue. In real life they ran side by side. Sources differ a little, so treat these dates as rounded.