Explain the Growth of Civilization and Three Features of it
The turning point in human history when humans started creating the first civilizations on earth is considered one of the most famous achievements in human history and the one that changed the life of men and women forever.
The first civilizations grew almost simultaneously around 3000 B.C. in the area later called Mesopotamia, between the rivers Tigres and Euphrates in modern day Iraq and in Egypt along the river Nile. The irrigation and cultivation of the land that had started some thousand years earlier along with the domestication of animals and the permanent settlements created as a result gradually led to various other significant changes that first appeared in the Near East. The further spreading of agriculture led to the rising of two more civilization from around 2500 to 2000 BC; one in the Indus valley and another in China, followed by more civilizations in the Aegean, the rest of the Near East and ultimately further to the West in Europe.
Three of the main features of civilization that appear in the first human civilizations and in all those that followed are: the presence of organized city or cities, the existence and use of a certain form of writing and the presence of monumental art and architecture. Agriculture played a major part in the creation of the first cities. As food became easily available, population grew and so did settlements which became larger and larger until they reached the size of cities, the first urban centers. Urbanization brought along the need to keep records and the first forms of writing, the Sumerian cuneiform and the Egyptian hieroglyphics were initially used for the recording of food and other goods, then for trade and diplomacy and later even for literature. Art and architecture, especially in its monumental scale were developed in the cities as a way to impose religious beliefs, promote political rule and impress neighbors and potential enemies.
The growth of civilization was a slow process that began with the agricultural revolution and changed the course of the world forever.
