With the end of the Paleolithic we move
over into the Neolithic now lithic is still Stone Age with L-I-T-H-I-C, Ic. So
you still have of stone or with stone however Neolithic neo means new now new is a relative term but still this part of prehistory is when people begin was
settling down becoming sedentary agrarian they are able to grow their own
crops they domesticate animals they are no longer hunter-gatherers because
they're no longer moving from one place to another constantly in search of food
now naturally this doesn't happen overnight which is why in between the Paleolithic and Neolithic like we talked before
there's a transition period the transition period is known as the
Mesolithic that's that approximately thousand years when there's transition
is happening when people are beginning to learn about farming they're teaching
each other about growing and storing crops we actually know a little bit
about that thanks to art work again the things people make teach us about their
culture and society the Mesolithic age we begin getting glimpses of different
types of hunting we begin getting images of the first ploughs of the
domestication of animals painted on the walls of caves and shelters which gives
us an insight of the transition that's gradually happening across culture
images like this one this shows the domestication of animals
from what we can see most likely cattle and deer and there's something worth
noting in these Mesolithic images something that's going to keep haunting
us throughout this class in these early images it appears that the domestication
of animals and children is both strongly connected with the role of females in
society in the image that you're looking at on your screen right now you'll see a
lot of women in the area surrounded by these animals there are no men in this
area which implies to us that whether men were involved in this or not the
Association the connection is with females being the domesticators now
that's going to come back haunt us in a really big way later
because women are depicted as the ones who bring civilization domestication so
there is wild untamed area and there's strength in that wildness there's
strength and power in the untamed but at the same time mankind is desperately
longing for order for civilization and that comes from domestication that
domestication that taming is the domain of women in art and you're going to see
that over and over again so keep in mind that women are the domesticators men
represent the power and the strength the wildness now these domestication's
become cities and small collections groupings of people as I said we see the
rise of Agriculture that picture on the upper right is actually an image of
farming that strange thing connected to the two horses is actually a plow used
for tilling the soil putting seeds into the ground we've just recently found
even earlier storage of grain than we had previously been aware of
so these Neolithic peoples are learning to farm they're learning to grow crops
to store seed and they're learning to use animals to a system in that as well
as for food we see images of dogs being domesticated here and we also believe
that this is where the domestication of cats begins we believe that cats
originally started out living with humans to protect grain storage in the
Neolithic period basically rats other vermin would come in and eat all of the
grain in the silo and we believe that felines cats were able to defend those
grain stores and help people make sure that there were food there was food now
these Neolithic peoples are going to begin settling down and learning new
skills from one another not only farming but new methods of manufacture of
defending themselves and as they settle down together we begin to get a glimpse
of the world's very first cities now these Neolithic cities probably popped
up all across the world but we don't have the
remnants of a lot of them mostly because of environmental factors for example we
know that there were some mud-brick cities in England and northern France
the problem is if you're using mud bricks in an environment where there's a
lot of rain a lot of swampland we know the city was there because we actually
have the chemical deposits but other than that we really don't have a lot of
remnants of that city where we do have remnants of these Neolithic cities that
give us a glimpse into this culture are largely in the Middle East for example
one of the first known Neolithic cities was actually the city of Jericho there
are multiple cities of Jericho stacked on top of one another that happens with
a lot of cities you'll see that later on when we get to Rome where an earlier
city is conquered falls apart falls down and they simply build a newer version of
the city basically they wrecked the stuff and then add new layers on top
Jericho is one of those examples where you have multiple layers of city built
one on top of the other the earliest layers we found of Jericho
date from approximately 10,000 to 7500 BCE that city was a fortified walled
city and a highly impressive one as well we found the version of Jericho
probably the second version of the city possibly the third which we date from
about 9,000 to 8000 BCE in that version of the city we found the remnants of a
massive rock-cut ditch with a huge mud brick wall behind it so basically think
of it like a moat with a fortified city what we've got left of that version of
the city was surrounded by approximately a five foot thick stone wall and we have
that stone wall up about 13 feet now it was probably higher than that but we
only have about 13 feet left of it now that's unbelievable and at regular
intervals are massive towers in the picture on your right that circular
shape is actually what's left of one of these huge towers along the wall and
that square thing is actually a climb through like a ladder that a watchman
would have climbed up to get to the top of that tower now just the sheer
manpower and effort required to build a five foot thick stone wall 13 to 20 feet
tall around an entire city with these massive towers is unbelievable and it
tells us again something very important about these early civilizations these
early people who built the city they were not pacifists and they were
concerned about defending themselves there have been ideas that these early
Neolithic cultures were peaceful a number of theories have said that they
were female dominated matriarchal and of course according to these theorists
women are just naturally peaceful and they would never get involved in wars I
think the people who come up with these theories have never worked in a
workplace full of women I have but they claim that these early civilizations
were very peaceful and basically the evidence tells us that's not accurate
walls structures like Jericho it's highly unlikely that anyone would build
something of that size and scale to prevent animals from getting in this is
an early indication of violence and warfare between human groups now the
city of Jericho is interesting for a number of other reasons as well
including what we believe may be an indication of ancestor worship there was
an investigation into Jericho digging up those early cities back in the 1960's
and 1970's and one day right before the expedition was about to leave one of the
archaeologists went out to do some final digging just a last little bit of work
underneath the the floor of one of the houses now as she began to do this last little bit of digging and excavation she noticed something wedged
underneath the floor of the neolithic house that she was actually digging up
and as she began to look closer and excavate it what she discovered was
remarkable what she discovered was a human skull covered in clay, sculpted to
look like a face with seashells as eyes this by the way is one of the reasons I
will never be an archaeologist just just saying now for the archaeologists though
this was an amazing discovery and as other groups came back and began to
continue to excavate Jericho they found more and more of these skulls all
sculpted over with clay to resemble human faces they were all either in
cavities underneath the house or actually on little shelves and niches
within the buildings all of the skulls the clay sculpted over it was flattened
on the bottom and the belief is that these skulls were actually intended as
display pieces now these are not apparently enemy skulls they don't seem
to have been damaged in some way as they would have been in a battle if they've
been defeated and what many scholars believe is that these skulls are
actually the skulls of dead family and dead relatives of these people in this
Neolithic City we believe that these people actually took the skulls of the
dead and sculpted clay to resemble the facial
features of the departed the shells that were used for eyes were a valuable
commodity something that was rare in a desert area like this and they were used
as eyes to give these skulls life this tells us that these people unlike us
believed that it was important and comforting for the dead to watch over
them and to have some sort of physical talisman of their dead relatives some
scholars as I've said believed that this is a form of ancestor worship others
simply believe that it is a physical representation of this desire for the
dead to continue to walk out watch over the people a blurring of the barrier
between life and death if you will something that is very different than
the way most modern people in our culture view death we tend to isolate it
to put it away in graveyards not to have this watching over us in our home as
these ancient Neolithic peoples did now Jericho is a more typical City what we
would think of streets walls buildings but not all early cities
follow that pattern it's actually one of the cool things about Neolithic cities
they don't have a set pattern there is no way of building a city yet it's not
accepted and we see a variety of really unique and creative solutions to city
building that remarkable innovation and city building is visible in the city of
Catal Huyuk I have to practice every semester before I say that Catal Huyuk is
a little bit later than Jericho it's dated to about 7500 to 5,700 BCE and it
is in what would today be Turkey now part of what makes Catal Huyuk so
fascinating is the fact that it isn't like into a modern city
there aren't streets and with buildings in between instead Catal Huyuk built
its buildings sharing one another's walls so in other words as you can see
in the picture one building would share a wall with the next they would built be
built directly next to each other instead of streets going between the
buildings the people of Catal Huyuk had openings
on their rooms that they would use to access the rooftops and the rooftops
were actually the city streets rather than separations between the buildings
now we believe that Catal Huyuk like Jericho was highly defensible simply
because there were no streets you couldn't come into the city through open
passageways because all of the city buildings were directly connected to one
another that direct connection made Catal Huyuk very secure very safe and
it also fascinates us because again it's early city building it's people
experimenting it's finding different and unique ways of building these structures
and trying to find out what works well and what does not work as well these
Neolithic people are finding their way as they come together and live in larger
and larger communities they're experimenting they're learning new ways
of building new ways of creating these structures these openings and the cities
themselves now in Catal Huyuk we find several temples in amongst those
buildings that are all connected together those temples have two primary
focuses now again there isn't writing here so
we're guessing the two temples seem to be grouped around male focused temples
and female focused temples now this goes back to what I was talking about before
with the images the pictures we have with the domestication of animals and
then being very strongly associated with the female the female temples that we
find have images like the one on the upper left that image shares some things
that you saw with the Paleolithic Venus figures the large breasts the rotund
stomach but you'll notice something that is very pronounced in that sculpture the
female figure appears to be seated on a throne and under both of her arms are
animal heads we believe again as we saw in the cave paintings and shelter
paintings that the female is associated with domestication and civilization the
female figure is the domesticator of animals the bringer of order the
male-dominated temples are very different the one on the picture on the
lower right depicts images sculptures from some of the male temples at Catal Huyuk male temples seem to be associated with horned animals beasts like bulls
with these powerful horns and that association of the masculine with bulls
and with horned animals is not going away remember this both the female associated with domestication and the male
associated with the horned animals particularly Bulls because you're going
to be hearing that for weeks in this class it's going to come up over and
over and over again in later cultures which is why we feel pretty confident in
saying it in early civilizations like Catal Huyuk I should say early cities
like Catal Huyuk where we see these symbols but we don't have any writing to
correlate them we see similar symbols and later cultures where they're better
explained and so we kind of look backward and assume that this is similar
the male images are associated with Bulls largely because of strength and
fertility both are massive powerful creatures incredibly strong and bulls
are also very strongly associated with fertility they are extremely well
endowed and we believe that the Association with masculinity is tied there and we see it even in these early temples so
female domestication and civilization male power and fertility these structures whether you're talking about Jericho or Catal Huyuk are also
an architectural experiment I mean these people don't have set specific ways of
building these structures creating open space to live and so they're trying
different methods now the two main methods that you will see in neolithic
and even in Bronze Age buildings are through two things known as post and
lintel structures and corbelled structures now post and lintel
construction has two vertical openings and then a flat lintel or top piece
you've seen post and lintel construction in so many places I view doors in your
house they probably use post and lintel construction the other method is
something called a corbelled opening which essentially takes bricks or stones
and places them almost like an upside-down staircase where each one
extends slightly out from the one below it this creates kind of a stair-step
arch and is very strong as part of a wall it also allows you to create spaces
that are not simply square or rectangular now let's look at post and
lintel and corbelled in a little bit more detail as far as strengths and
weaknesses are concerned post and lintel construction uses two posts with a flat
lintel across the top the strength of post and lintel construction is that if
you use a single piece lintel a large piece of wood a large piece of stone
post and lintel construction is incredibly strong all of the weight from
the lintel goes directly downward because it is simply a flat piece placed
on top of two vertical pieces post and lintel structure construction can be
very strong but the problem is it is limited and it is limited by the width
of a lintel you can only make that large single wide piece so wide
for two reasons number one it's going to cause a lot of pressure in the middle
it's gonna want to fall inward in the center of the opening and number two
you're only going to be able to find a stone or a piece of wood of certain
width today we can manufacture steel i-beams that are extremely wide and
allow large post and lintel construction but prior to steel i-beams you didn't
have that luxury therefore post and lintel construction
when it gets wider begins to have a problem as it gets wider the centerpiece
of the lintel is going to want to shatter downward as all of the weight
presses downward into that opening now this is really important to understand
and keep in mind and you can have a question on a quiz on this the
limitation of post and lintel is in the width the wider you make your posts
those two vertical supports the weaker the lintel structure is going to be the
more it's going to want to fall inward you're going to see this over and over
and over in ancient buildings all of those pretty columns like in ancient
Greece those are not just for aesthetics they're not just because they look good
those are actually holding up the weight of a roof in a post and lintel
construction they're preventing it from breaking in the middle and collapsing
downward you can actually see this breakage and lentils on ancient
structures that centerpiece begins to break down or fall inward because of all
the weight pushing directly downward on that horizontal lintel construction
corbelled openings are stronger because they do not actually push all the weight
straight downward now whether or not they're stronger depends on what kind of
a building they're in as I said that solid lintel is almost unbreakable the
problem is when you make those posts and lintel construction wider or when you
begin using a series of stones in post and lintel instead of just a single
piece of wood or stone corbelled openings have a great deal of strength
when they're actually part of a wall because post and lintel openings push
everything straight downward whereas corbelled openings actually
push everything out at an angle at a diagonal angle now that diagonal
angle allows the weight of the structure to be pushed downward and outward and
when that happens you need support because when you push downward and
outward things want to flip up so in other words think about it think about
having something at a 45 degree angle if you push down on the top of it the other
side flips upward like a teeter totter or seesaw in order to make a corbelled opening really strong you need external weight
so where as post and lintel openings are good on their own corbelled openings
work most effectively as part of an actual wall now post and lintel
construction is going to be our earliest construction and again we often see post
and lintel construction as standalone structures these standalone structures
are often found in the countryside and they are often two vertical pieces your
posts made of stone topped with a single horizontal lintel made of a massive
piece of stone these structures are what are known as Dolmen now weirdly enough
the largest concentration of Dolmen is not where you might think they are most
people see this early stone construction and they think England they think
Ireland the largest concentration of dolmen actually is in of all places
Korea we believe these Dolmen structures were actually four-sided structures
originally you can see in the picture on your screen there are three sides but
you can actually see the collapse stone that would have covered the front of the
structure therefore because that massive fourth stone would have covered the
opening we don't believe that these are actually living structures residential
structures it would have been almost impossible to open and close them with a
fourth massive stone in front instead we believe that these Dolmens are actually
burial sites they were ancient tombs where bodies were located and these
massive stone structures would have protected them from scavengers from any
kind of problem and again we believe that these people put forth this effort
as a burial again as a respect for their dead they may have come back and
revisited it they may have come back and opened these structures and buried
more of their dead in them now these Dolmens can be absolutely massive and they fascinate us because again we're not exactly sure how
they were built this particular Dolmen is located in the United Kingdom and it
represents the single largest capstone that large top piece that huge single
stone you're seeing balanced across the other stones weighs approximately a
hundred and fifty tons for people who don't have power moving equipment the
ability to raise and balance a hundred and fifty ton flat stone and of course
to transport that hundred and fifty tons stone to this location to start with is
an absolutely mind-boggling mystery now someone's always trying to tell me it's
aliens but we don't actually believe that there are a number of modern
scholars who have actually figured out ways to move massive weights like that
and we believe that the early peoples these Neolithic peoples probably used a
series of ramps animal power manpower and a whole lot of ingenuity in order to
create these structures which must have been incredibly important to them to put
in this much effort again these early people are primitive they're using rocks
and stuff but still they are incredibly intelligent and innovative and what
they're able to accomplish now we do believe these Dolmens are tomb
structures but tomb structures only become more complex as time goes on
there's a new type of tomb or burial site that comes around later on
in the Neolithic era that burial site is something called a Passage Tomb and a
passage tomb is a huge structure often round with a passage going through it
passage - yeah it's like that and then a central area for a burial tomb site one
of the best-preserved of these is actually in Newgrange in Ireland and
these passage tombs are still around today they're tourist locations today you can see in the picture on the screen a group
of tourists about to enter the passage in the passage tomb now what you're
looking at on the screen is dated to approximately 3200 BCE that puts it at a
thousand years older than the current version of Stonehenge
these tombs are huge the one on your screen is approximately 300 feet in
diameter that's like a football field across there built of structured stones
that create the passage in the central burial chamber and then those stones are covered in rocks and dirt to create this rounded hill with a
man-made opening inside now this particular passage tomb actually
contains a long passage that extends in with the central round burial chamber
you can see here in the cross section that that long passageway created of
these vertical stones goes back around 118 feet and then you can see that
there's this almost beehive shaped central area that goes high up above the
passage that's actually the burial site and again like the tombs the skulls
under the floors of the homes in Jericho it seems that people came and visited
these passage tombs on a regular basis there was not the separation between the
graveyard and the home that we see in today's culture instead it seems these
people are quite casual and possibly quite passionate about visiting their
dead on a regular basis modern scholars suggest that this passageway in a
passage tomb is aligned with a Solstice in this case the winter solstice and
there are scholars and studies that's mark how far the winter solstice light
goes into the tomb and they say it goes further into a passage tomb at that
winter solstice then the light enters at any other points in the year other
scholars call complete and total BS on that they say it is a big coincidence we honestly don't know we're still working on it we may be able to
confirm or debunk that idea of these aligned with the Solstice but we'll have
to wait and see until perhaps you can find more passage tombs and do more
research now the central area the place where the burial chamber is the place
where people would visit and possibly hold rituals that area of the tomb
actually uses a corbelled structure here's a bottom view looking up there you go this is called a corbelled
vault and you can see how the builders in the Neolithic period took these
stones and created a corbelled opening where each stone juts out slightly from
the one below it this also kind of showcases something a corbelled opening
can do that a post and lintel cannot and that's creating a circular domed space
post and lintel doesn't do that because post and lintel is very square very
rectangular the corbelled opening lets you build stones in a variety of
different shapes creating this unique opening this unique structure that
creates the circular space in the center of the passage tomb now there are
numerous passage tombs many of them in the United Kingdom others Newgrange
there's also a location called Knowth where again these passage structures are
created with massive stones they create a passageway into a central chamber in
the tomb Knowth is worthy of note because it is one of the sites where we find the
most carved stones from this era there are approximately 261 carved external
stones what scholars call curb stones at knoweth those represent about 45% of the
carved stones in all of Ireland and about a quarter of the carved stones
from the Neolithic era in all of Europe this a tomb again this passage tomb is
believed to line up with either a lunar or solar equinox and we think it may
have actually been a site that was used to keep track of calendar years or
passage of time one of the arguments for that is actually this stone one of the
carved stones at Knowth now you can see how worn away the stone is it's
thousands of years old but at the bottom is a rubbing a piece of paper that was
put over the stone and rubbed to pick up the engraving in the stone it's a very
odd pattern there's swirls and there's like a
Halfmoon shape with different shapes carved at the edge of each one of the
spokes or stars from that pattern many scholars believe
that what you're actually seeing is in fact a calendar perhaps even a tracing
of the moon cycles of the lunar calendar which would have been a very important
for keeping track of time especially because we're in the Neolithic period
which means these people are farmers they're trying to track farming they're
trying to track their crops and having some sort of calendar cycle being able
to keep track of the months of the year of the lunar cycles might have been
extremely important for these people they would have been aligning than these
tombs these passage tombs based on the sky on the Stars and possibly even on
what do we today would call compass points we see those compass points used
often in ancient buildings in ancient architecture and those compass points
interestingly enough seemed to hold significance a scholar by the name of
Joseph Campbell spent his entire lifetime studying mythology storytelling
in different cultures all around the world and in a lifetime of studying
mythology everywhere from the Arctic to North American tribes to
Africa to Central America to the Middle East Joseph Campbell found that symbols are common across storytelling in cultures
no matter where you are in the world and one of those symbols that he found were
the four compass directions the cardinal directions of north south east and west
because of that later scholarship tracing these stories and these myths
many researchers and scholars believe that those ancient architects those
builders used similar meanings or symbols for those four directions as we
see in later stories and later architecture if that is the case then
you have four different directions each one with its own meaning in those
cardinal directions in mythology each of those directions has a symbol something
it represents the North often stands for trials and testing in stories and
legends when a hero goes off on a trial or journey he often goes north because that is the direction where he finds trials and tests South in the opposite
direction often represents physical comfort safety and security
it's a place of peace and comfort east and west are both incredibly significant
east as the direction of the Sun coming up in the morning is associated with
birth and new beginnings so East is birth new beginnings fresh start
West that is where the Sun ends where the Sun sinks and therefore the West is
often associated with death ending and the afterlife in early cultures often
even when we get to Egypt later on you'll see that the Great Pyramids tombs
for the dead are built on the western bank of the Nile River because the West
is considered to be the direction of death and of the Dead those cardinal
directions are often associated with these early passage tombs with the
direction of the passage the way they line up with solar events but we don't
know if those symbolisms apply all the way back in the neolithic period again
we don't know we're going backwards based on later knowledge and guessing
that that later knowledge originated here with these early people in these
early cultures one of the places where that backward logic has been applied is
in henges or large structures built of stones that many believe our calendar
points or mark the cycles of the year henges generally are any structure that
has these post and lintel stones with two large vertical stones and then the
horizontal lintel across the top in a larger configuration in other words not
a single in a one alone but multiple of these particular configurations the most
famous is of course Stonehenge the version of Stonehenge that we know and
are familiar with today is dated to approximately 2700 to 1500 BCE but we
know that actually there were earlier stone henges that were built long before
this one they're still investigating that actually
a group of scholars is currently using modern sonar and radar to try and map
out Stonehenge and look at the earlier versions that are no longer in existence
you can find pictures of it online it's it's not funny but it's absolutely
hysterical to me because essentially they have the equipment on like little 4x4
wheelers and golf carts that they're towing behind them so they don't mess up
the site they don't damage any of the area around it and it just makes me
laugh to see a bunch of archaeologists on four-wheelers like zipping around
Stonehenge the earlier versions of Stonehenge were actually made of wood
instead of stone which is why we no longer have them this current massive
structure still doesn't represent represent the full span of the original
Stonehenge we only have parts of the original henge still standing now what
Stonehenge was and what it was originally used for is still a hot point
of debate some people firmly believe that it was some sort of religious
sacred site today I would not recommend going anywhere near Stonehenge on an equinox there are people who believe that they're carrying on early Celtic
traditions druidic traditions which for the record we actually know very little
about and they meet and have rituals at Stonehenge they're licensed to do it
there's a lot of nudity and no quality control however we don't actually know
the Stonehenge was that kind of a religious ritual site there have been a
variety of different theories about Stonehenge one of them is that
Stonehenge was actually a calendar or some sort of record-keeping site we
found two stones at a distance that we call the heal stones and during the
equinoxes the light comes through those heal stones and hits a center stone in
the middle of Stonehenge that is often sometimes referred to as an altar step
some people suggest that this is a calendar is a record-keeping kind of
thing it allows that it would have allowed Neolithic peoples to be able to
effectively track one particular point in the year other people have suggested
that perhaps Stonehenge was used as sort of healing location or sight and
the discovery of a type of stone called bluestone that again in later cultures
were extrapolating backward in later cultures was believed to have healing
properties it's not native to the area around Stonehenge but we found deposits
of it remnants of this bluestone at Stonehenge
and some people have suggested that Stonehenge was some sort of a healing
site that idea has recently been bolstered by the discovery of ashes
cremated human remains which again some people want to say it's a sacrificial
site that's possible it's also possible that those are simply the remains of
people who didn't make it at the healing site they weren't healed and it's
possible that they were then buried at the site it would have been a basically
a Stone Age Hospital we don't know we're still investigating but the complexity
of this site the size of it the fact that it was sustained and taken care of
for so many years continues to absolutely fascinate us and so we continue to study Stonehenge as one of the greatest of these structures of these henges that
we've been able to find and we know about now as these Neolithic peoples
begin settling down begin establishing cities they begin sharing knowledge and
sharing culture and ultimately those Stonehenge cultures are going to grow
into larger and larger groups of people living in a single area they're going to
become what we call civilizations and those civilizations are where our
records our knowledge of mankind really begins to pick up where we begin to drop
the I think we might scholars believe and we begin to actually know something
because these civilizations leave us written records there are four points
where human beings settle down into larger civilizations and we will look at
all four of them however we're going to look at two of them in more detail than
the other two now let me explain why the four civilizations are the Yellow River
civilization in China the Indus River civilization in India Mesopotamia
and Egypt we're going to look at Mesopotamia and Egypt and a lot more detail than we are the Yellow River and the Indus River civilizations that is for a
very simple reason and there are other reasons I'll go into them in more detail
when we talk about those other two civilizations but the simple easy
explanation is that as far as we can tell the Yellow River civilization in
China does not have a written language so we can't read about what they
believed what they thought what their culture was like because we don't have
any written documentation that kind of limits us in what we know and we're back
to we think and we believe the Indus Valley Civilisation in India is amazing
I can show you some beautiful artwork later but the civilization has a writing
system which we can't read oh goody which means that we can't actually
understand a lot about the culture about what they believed about the way that
their government worked because we cannot yet read their writing system
until we do we can't talk about it in detail because again we're back to we
think and we know the two cultures that we do know more about our Mesopotamia
and Egypt and we're going to talk about both of those in a lot more detail
although the two are contemporary they grow about the same time they progress
in very different ways so we're gonna look at one of them and then the other
to do that we're going to look at Mesopotamia first the land between the
two rivers and that's where we'll go next Mesopotamia this land this Fertile
Crescent between two rivers the rainfall the ability to grow crops goes from
Mesopotamia along the coastline of the Mediterranean and dips down into Egypt
along the Nile River these two civilizations actually get started
fairly close to one another but they are so different from one another their
geographic locations their access to water and the ability to farm and grow
crops and the way that the farming is done in these two areas are very
different and their geography where they're located shapes the cultures they
shape the civilizations that grow and come into existence in the
two separate locations