Ancient Civilization: The Epic of Gilgamesh

To study history, you first have to examine the way that the people lived and what factors could have caused them to live that way. For many people, they have to adapt their ways of living based on their geographical location. This could include things like the way they dress all the way to the type of jobs that they do. It is a fact that you are only going to be able to grow certain types of food in a specific type of soil. Even in today’s society we still have to adapt to our environment, which is affected by the geographic location. This is no different than ancient civilizations and where they decided to settle.
What does it mean to be an ancient civilization? Webster’s Dictionary defines ancient as having lived a very long time ago. Webster’s define civilization as a relatively high level of culture and technology. So ancient civilization is people who lived along time ago and had a high level of culture and technology. Trigger in his book Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study list out twelve different criteria for the classification. Here are a few of the characteristics that he says a civilization must have skilled labor, divine power, a ruler, writing system, and government.
At first, most people were nomadic hunters and gathers. They would travel following the direction that the food and water went. So, those people had to be able to adapt to the new environments that they went across rather quickly. Then as populations grew and technology increased, you began to see the people becoming more sedimentary. The people became farmers and herders to provide for their families. However, this brings up some questions about where did the people settle? Why did the people settle in those places? How did they a...

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... it gives them transportation. Like anybody, you adapt to your surroundings so that way you can survive. The ancient civilizations were no different. They had to adapt to their surroundings. They used the flooding from the rivers to their advantage. The people used the new soil to grow the crops that would best work in that area.

Works Cited

Hansen, Valerie, and Kenneth R. Curtis. Voyages in World History. Boston: Wadsworth Pub, 2013. Print.
McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, John Buckler, Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Roger B. Beck, Clare Haru Crowston, and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks. Understanding World Societies: A Brief History. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. Print.
Merriam-Websters Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 May 2014. .
Trigger, Bruce G. Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.