River civilizations first emerged around 3000 BC along major rivers like the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in India, and the Yangtze in China. The flooding of these rivers provided fertile land for agriculture, allowing large populations to live in urban societies ruled by powerful kings. Writing was developed around 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia to record taxes, trade, and other administrative information, and it later was used to write religious texts, laws, science, and stories. Early forms of writing included cuneiform script in Mesopotamia using wedge-shaped symbols pressed into clay tablets, and hieroglyphic script in Egypt

1. MESOPOTAMIA AND EGYPT
Introduction
River civilizations
The writing
TERESA ARRABÉ

2. River civilizations
The first civilization appeared during the 3rd
millenium B.C. from the first towns of the Metal
Age. They are known as River civilizations.
EGYPT
MESOPOTAMIA
INDO
CHINA
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3. During the Metal Age some villages started having kings who became
very powerful and formed great empires and civilizations.
River civilizations started next to big
rivers such as: Tigris and Éuphates in
Mesopotamia, Nile river in Egypt, Indus
river in India and Yangtze river in China.
In these regions the flooding of the rivers
fertilised the land and produced abundant
harvest that provided enough food for large populations
living in towns.
TERESA ARRABÉ
River civilizations

4. CHARACTERISTICS OF RIVER CIVILIZATIONS:
•URBAN SOCIETIES, big towns with large populations
•GREAT POLITICAL POWER. The king led the army, made laws
and was the religious leader. He has some state officials to help
him
•SOCIAL HIERARCHY. There were 2social groups: a small
minority of privileged people (the king and his family,
noblemen, priests, state officials and some members of the
army) and a the rest of the people (peasants, craftsmen and
merchants who paid lots of taxes)
•LARGE-SCALE BUILDING WORKS: Irrigation canals that
carriers water from the rivers to the fields. And also temples,
palaces and tombs as a symbol of the king’s power.
•CULTURE, SCIENCE AND ART had a great development.
TERESAARRABÉ
River civilizations

5. WRITING
WRITING = HISTORY
MESOPOTAMIA 5000 years ago. WHY?
In a growing city writing was an essential
method to remember important information
about taxes, trades and population.
Soon people started to write about other
issues such as religious books, codes about
laws, science books and story books.
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6. TERESAARRABÉ
Cuneiform writing.
Was developed in
Sumer. It was written
by making signs on a
clay tablet with a reed.
It was called cuneiform
because the patterns
looked as if they were
made by a wedge
(cuneus in latin)

7. WRITING. …….WHERE, WHEN, HOW?
•MESOPOTAMIA. Cuneiform writing. In a clay tablet. Straight and
round signs. 2.000 symbols.
•EGYPT. Hieroglyphic writing made on papyrus.(A plant that grows
near the river Nile). Hieroglyphic writing represented words and
sounds. There were 700 different signs.
•CHINA. Paper was invented by Chinese peopIe in 105 B. C.
Chinese writing use around 10.000 signs.
•The writing we used today was invented by the phoenicians in
1200 B.C. when they created an alphabet of 22 consonants. Later
on, greeks added the vowels.
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River civilizations

8. TERESAARRABÉ

9. TERESAARRABÉ
It is a trilingual stela. The same text is writing
in Hieroglyphs, in demotic and in Greek,
provided the first clues based on which
Young and Champollion deciphered the
Egyptian hieroglyphic script.
The Rosetta
stone was
discovered in
1799 and it is
displayed in the
British Museum
since 1802.

10. TERESAARRABÉ
CARTRIDGE