Unit 8/9 - Lesson 1. Introduction. The river civilisations

In this unit we are going to study the first historical civilisations. This first lesson is an introduction of the contents that we are going to study in the unit.

The questions that we are going to ask ourselves are:
– Why did the first historical civilisations appear in the valleys of great rivers?
– What distinctive features do those historical civilisations share?

We are going to focus on the two of those civilisations that had most influence on the modern European civilisation: Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both of them emerged at the ends of the Fertile Crescent area, which you know well from the previous lesson.  In the next lessons we shall focus on the history of Egypt, which is simpler than the history of the Mesopotamian kingdoms and empires.

This is the presentation on the contents of this lesson. In some slides there is a reference to the pages of your book where you can read extra information.



Some important vocabulary for this lesson:

• To dig: to make a hole in the ground: to dig a canal.
• Irrigation: watering plants with an artificial method, usually for agriculture. You can bring water into the plants from a river by a canal, or using a pump, or dig a well to get the water.
• Flood: a period of high water level in a river, when the water goes out of the normal river bed.
• Slime: the wet mud that you can find in a river. After a flood, the flooded areas are covered with slime.
• To sow: to plant seeds.
• Ruler (person): the person who leads the government of a country. The pharaoh was the ruler of Ancient Egypt.
• Public works
• To settle a dispute
• Stratum (plural strata): a layer, a level in a vertical succession. Archaeologists dig in their excavations looking for the strata in the subsoil which contain remains from the past

Many Mesopotamian cities were destroyed and people forgot about them: in their place you could only see something that looked like a natural hill or mountain, which local people called tell. These hills were formed by the accumulation of archaeological strata from different periods. Excavation reveal the ruins that date from the successive historical moments.
In the image: excavation at Tell-Hazna (Syria)

This is also time to remember the geography of the Fertile crescent area, which you have studied this year. You will need it for the test.

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