Four great ancient civilizations: what they had in common

Start with the grouping itself

The four great ancient civilizations, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus and the Yellow River, is a grouping long used in East Asian textbooks, including those in Korea and Japan. Putting the four side by side makes it easy to compare the conditions under which early civilizations emerged. Scholars, however, do not treat these four as the only starting points of civilization, since independent civilizations also developed in Mesoamerica and the Andes. This article uses the four not as a definitive list but as a starting point for comparison, setting out what they shared and how they differed. The origins of farming and writing themselves are covered in a separate article on turning points in world history.

Where and when

All four lay along great rivers. Dates vary somewhat between studies, so it is better to remember rough periods and the order than exact years. The name Mesopotamia itself means the land between two rivers.

• Mesopotamia: between the Tigris and Euphrates, with Sumerian cities growing from around 3500 BCE
• Egypt: the Nile valley, with Upper and Lower Egypt unified around 3100 BCE
• Indus: the Indus valley, with cities such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro flourishing from around 2600 BCE
• Yellow River: building on Neolithic cultures, with the Shang dynasty emerging around 1600 BCE

Why great river valleys?

Great rivers supplied both water and fertile soil. When a river flooded, silt carried from upstream enriched the land, and irrigation let people raise large harvests even in dry regions. Surplus food fed more people and made possible a society in which not everyone had to farm. Rivers were also a threat. Preventing floods, digging channels and sharing water required the power to organize and direct many people. That is why irrigation and flood control are so often discussed alongside the rise of political power in river civilizations. Rivers were also highways for moving goods by boat.

Five shared features

Although the four were far apart, they shared similar elements. Using these five as a checklist makes any of them easier to organize.

• Farming: grain agriculture based on irrigation, producing surplus food
• Bronze: used for weapons, tools and ritual vessels
• Writing: scripts or signs for administration, records and ritual
• Cities: settlements with walls, temples or public buildings, and markets
• Ranks and organization: a division between rulers and ruled, and institutions to govern society

The four through their writing

Mesopotamia used cuneiform, pressed into clay tablets with the tip of a reed, and Egypt used pictorial hieroglyphs. Signs that look like writing survive on Indus seals and other objects, but they have not been deciphered, so the politics and beliefs of that civilization can only be inferred from archaeological remains. From the late Shang period on the Yellow River come oracle bone inscriptions, divinations carved on turtle shells and animal bones, which developed into today's Chinese characters. How much we can know differs enormously between civilizations whose writing has been read and those whose writing has not. It is a clear example of what a surviving record makes possible.

Look at the differences too

Looking only at shared features makes it easy to assume the four were alike, but their environments and societies differed considerably. The Nile flooded on a fairly regular schedule and deserts limited outside invasion, so Egypt sustained a system that revered its king almost as a god for a very long time. Mesopotamia, by contrast, had rivers whose floods were hard to predict and open terrain on all sides, so peoples and states rose and fell in turn, and written law such as Babylon's Code of Hammurabi from the 18th century BCE survives. Indus cities are known as planned towns with orderly streets and drainage. In Shang China on the Yellow River, ancestor worship and divination were closely bound up with politics.

Traces that reach the present

Some legacies of the four civilizations remain in daily life. Mesopotamia's base-60 counting is said to survive in dividing an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds, and a circle into 360 degrees. Egypt used a calendar of 365 days, often described as a distant root of today's solar calendar. Chinese characters, descended from the oracle bone script, still live on in the vocabulary of several East Asian languages. Monumental buildings such as pyramids and ziggurats show how many people and resources those societies could organize. Linking them to something in the present makes civilizations thousands of years old feel connected to today.

Studying by comparison

Memorizing the four separately leads to them blurring together. If you make a table by asking the same questions four times, the shared features and differences appear on their own. If you have time, add a row for Mesoamerica or the Andes to the same table.

• Which river valley, and were its floods regular?
• What writing did it use, and has it been deciphered?
• What are its signature sites and buildings?
• Who ruled, and what did people believe?