The Rise and Fall of Civilizations Throughout World History Throughout our world history, we have seen many civilizations rise and fall, many where successful and many where not because of the way there leaders adopt their civilizations to the environment and the other power related problems. From the rise and fall of different civilizations you will also see different technology and inventions been develop and past on through generations, as well as different political organizations and cultures. The environment and the way the civilization spread out and expanded as a great deal in the rise/fall of their civilization. Did civilizations depend on agriculture to much that it caused the civilization to collapse? The environment in different …show more content…
You could communicate among each other, keep track of your livestock, make contracts and most of all for trade. Writing developed politics and power organizations and aloud leaders to develop a cohesion system, which developed taxation and rules to obey in society. Many peasants would have to pay taxes so that the priest, military and other forms of higher social power people could develop specialization’s for the leader and civilization. If a civilization was isolated it could keep order, trade and communication to a basic level but with the population rising and with a hungry power driving leader it forces the civilization to extend and then you start to see fragmentation all over the place. With the rise in population you are going to see a much higher demand on resources, such as good agriculture areas to grow food (Also defense starts to become a problem because people are scattered all over the area and no longer is isolated and is available for invasions). This forces civilizations to invade one another and try to take over their area for more resources and spaces. Rome, which was one of the most powerful empires, was expanding at an incredible rate, meanwhile Carthage another civilization was also expanding to. Carthage invaded Rome but lost so now all the land that Carthage had know was Rome’s territory to rule. This shows how one-civilization expansions can whip out another civilization because of the lack of …show more content…
With Agriculture societies they where more pron to get a disease then a hunting and gathering society because they have a sedentary life and the microbes could travel through the soil and water usually it was they own waste that did this to them. Also with the trade between civilizations brought infections and deadly diseases. Microbes had a hay day with this because it was one big breeding ground for them, which caused humans to come to their deaths by thousands. The most deadly carriers of disease where animals which civilization domesticate them for their use. Diamond reply,” The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history small poxes, flu, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles and the cholera are infectious diseases that evolved from animals,” ( 198-97 Diamond). A lot of the times it wasn’t how large of an army you had it was what kind of germs that you had brought that could whip out a whole civilization. This was one of the biggest factors in the rise and falls of civilization. If it didn’t whip you all out, you were left with very few people left and easy to be
Why did certain early civilizations thrive and some fail? Jared Diamond, a famous author and scientist, explains in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. He believes civilizations like the ones in Europe thrived because of geographical luck. Geographic luck is the idea that people in some areas got luckier than others. For example, the Fertile Crescent had a warm, moist climate, and fertile soil to grow wheat and barley, while people that lived in places like Papua New Guinea had to hunt, and forage for their food. Geographic luck aided the European empire, and was the reason they became so powerful. One of the key reasons Europe did so well was farming. Another reason they were able to conquer so much of the world was their well-placed civilization. Finally, Europe’s weapons, made from steel, were much more advanced than the weapons possessed by the rest of the world, and they came from their good geographic placement. Understanding geography’s role in Europe’s technological advancement is important, and to do so you must look at how they became powerful in the first place, which is because of farming, and domestication.
The Greek and Roman empires were so successful for many reasons. But one of the main reasons was their military powers. Many people think that the military is brutal and has alot of big guns, but its deeper than that. They require advanced weapons, superior strategy, and finally they need leaders to come up with these things. The Greeks came up with these, and then the Romans built upon the Greeks knowledge and fine combed it.
In a period of four centuries the Han, Roman, and Gupta empires fell. First in China, then in the Mediterranean, and lastly in India. The civilizations deteriorated from foreign invasion, internal conflicts, and internal weakness that made it to where invaders could invade and cause the decline of these major civilizations.
Agriculture is how Greek and Hebrew civilizations were started. Hebrews used the land to distance themselves from the sin of the cities. Their life was based on the land. They did trade trade goods but the countryside was more of their lifestyle. Greeks began as land cultivators. With their small farming communities they prospered and expanded. As time passed by Greece began to grow on trade and during 350 B.C.E imported two- thirds of the grain in consumed.
The Romans were on one of the greatest people of all. They had power, wealth, and even a half of the world. They built one of the strongest and vast empire that world has ever seen. They came from nothing to something awesome. It started of as a city and ended up being one of the greatest empire of all. This essay is going to focus on the Roman Empire from the rise to the fall and the government, architecture, mythology, Family Structure, and Food of the Romans.
The legend about Rome’s origins puts the founding of the city at around 735 B.C. It is said that a Vestal Virgin gave birth to twin boys, Romulus and Remus, and claimed that they were the sons of the god Mars. The Vestal Virgin was the sister of a king. The king believed that she was lying and imprisoned her. He put her two boys in a basket and threw it into the Tiber River. A she-wolf found the twins and raised them. The twins, Romulus and Remus, came back and killed the king and founded the city of Rome. Afterwards Romulus and Remus fought and Remus was killed. Romulus was Rome’s first king and after he died, he became a god and vanished.
Before the land of what we no class Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and other countries in the middle east grains, such as wheat and wild barley, could be seen growing in the wild without human hand to cultivate and nurture it (Authors 2007). Over time, humans began to recognize the benefit of the plants and began the first signs of human agriculture. The skill of farming took time and trial and error, but along the way, humans began to settle down to tend to their crops. Though the first crops were nothing more than seed s thrown about without rhyme or reason to the process we know today such as fields having, rows and sorting out the seeds to create a higher yield each harvest (Authors 2007). Because of the trial and error process, agriculture of plants did not take place of a short period but took many, many years to evolve to what we know today as agriculture; the new fa...
By the 1970s, Historian Peter Brown sparked an interesting debate about the Roman civilization. He dubbed a period in Roman history, ‘The Late Antiquity’, starting around 200 AD and lasting up until the eighth century, marking this was a period in time where the Roman civilization was not in decline, but in a state of transformation due to religious and cultural revolution, and causing many historians to agree or debate about this matter. Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, critique the theory of ‘The Late Antiquity’ and firmly believe the decline of Roman civilization instead of its transformation influenced by its barbaric invaders. He supports his position of Rome’s Fall with evidence from the diminishing
Most of the civilizations throughout history have been taken over or replaced by other civilizations due to disunity and chaos. Although an empire might seem prosperous, the decline and fall of empires are sometimes inevitable. Even though an empire might seem invincible, there are many factors that could lead to the sudden decline or fall of an empire. Over many centuries, historians have composed many reasons, such as weak militaries, economic burdens, dynastic successions, and external enemies, which have been known to contribute to the rise and fall of many once successful empires.
All the way from the start of civilization through to the Early Christianity there has been a pantheon of; destruction, recognition, wars, cultural diffusion, religious breakthroughs, laws that have been established, kings and queens crowned and dethroned. The Mesopotamian Civilization it was the land between two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers that civilization first began.
The blessing and curse of the Agricultural Revolution is advocated with its augmentation and dissemination. Taking the stipulative definition of “blessing” and “curse” from the original premise, one can only superimpose the layman’s terms of “negative” and “positive”. Upon examination of the two classifications within the Neolithic Period and ancient Mesopotamian civilization one can confirm the premise. Therefore, the agriculture revolution was a blessing and a curse for humanity. Human society began to emerge in the Neolithic Period or the New Stone Age. This new age began around 9,000 B.C.E. by the development of agriculture in the region surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is commonly referred to as “The Fertile Crescent” located in West Asia.1 The very development of agriculture had benefited humans by no longer having to move about in search of wild game and plants. Unencumbered by nomadic life humans found little need to limit family size and possessions and settled in a single location for many years. One negative aspect of this settling is that the population increased so much so that wild food sources were no longer sufficient to support large groups. Forced to survive by any means necessary they discovered using seeds of the most productive plants and clearing weeds enhanced their yield.2 This also lead humans to develop a wider array of tools far superior to the tools previously used in the Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age. The spread of the Agricultural Revolution in the Neolithic Period also cultivated positive aspects by creating connections with other cultures and societies. Through these connections they exchanged knowledge, goods, and ideas on herding and farming.3 Another major positive aspec...
A civilization is the starting point of a society. Civilizations have existed for millions of years and are the basic unit of structure for a society. Civilizations were the base of great societies such as Egypt and Rome. If not for civilizations these societies would not have flourished or even existed.
Although this definition can vaguely describe the overall fall of most civilizations, the actual details are more finite. One such event would be an environmental change. Archaeologists use this as a reason for the decline of civilizations often because it fits so well into any situation. A terrifying earthquake, a change in flow of a vital river, and a volcanic eruption are examples of what could have happened to abruptly end a civilization. Another reason might be over use of natural resources. As civilizations grew, the need for more resources increased. They could not grow enough food to support the growing population, and as a result trade networks fell apart, people began to starve, and large epidemics spread. Also many of these civilizations based everything on ideology. They believe that their rulers were gods on earth, so when these devastating things started happening, they lost faith in their ruler. Building temples, making statues of their kings, redistributing their goods, and the following of rulers all ceased. The accumulation of all these factors resulted in decline.
Cipolla calls it the first great economic revolution (Cipolla 18). The development of agriculture leads to the development of communities, city-states, civilizations, and other settlements. The social structure that formed around agriculture brought about the possibility of specialization within a society, since not everyone had to hunt and gather all the time. Instead of living in an ecologically sustainable manner like the hunter/gatherers, people started living in an economic manner (Southwick 128). Specialization enabled the development of social institutions such as religion and government, and agriculture necessitated the development of irrigation.