How geography shaped Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley and Shang China along their rivers, plus Greece, Rome and the Maya. Includes a reading passage about the Nile flood.
New York State Learning Standards learning standard: 9.1b; 9.1c · how the first civilizations grew along river valleys, adapted to their environment and shared common features
How we explain it
Children can open this short lesson before they practice.
The first civilizations grew along rivers, which gave water, fertile soil and travel routes.
Mesopotamia means “land between the rivers” (the Tigris and Euphrates), mostly in today’s Iraq.
Mountains, deserts and seas could protect or isolate a land, as with early China.
Example: Why did many of the earliest civilizations grow along rivers? Farms need water and good soil. Rivers also make travel and trade easier. Answer: Rivers gave water for crops, fertile soil, and routes for travel and trade
Where Civilizations Grew in New York
In the New York State Learning Standards, this is unit 2 of 16 in 9th grade Social Studies, after First Farmers and before Greece & Rome.
Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
Why is the Huang He called the Yellow River?
Its banks are covered in yellow flowers
It carries huge amounts of yellow-brown silt
The Sun reflects off it at sunset
It was painted for festivals
It carries huge amounts of yellow-brown silt
Hint: The river picks up fine, yellowish soil called loess. Its floods also earned it the name 'China's Sorrow.'
Question 2
Ancient Rome grew up on hills beside which river?
🏛️
the Tiber
the Nile
the Huang He
the Indus
the Tiber
Hint: Rome was built on seven hills near the Tiber River in central Italy.
Question 3
Why did Ancient Greece develop as many separate city-states instead of one kingdom?
⛰️
Mountains and seas divided the land into small regions
A pharaoh ruled all of Greece
The Greeks had only one big river valley
The land was completely flat
Mountains and seas divided the land into small regions
Hint: Rugged mountains and many islands kept communities apart, so each city-state, like Athens and Sparta, ran itself.
Question 4
Which civilization is each feature from? Sort them.
Sort into: 🌴 Mesopotamia · 🐉 Ancient China (Shang) · 🐊 Ancient Egypt
👁️hieroglyphs carved on temple walls
⚖️Hammurabi's law code
🔶stepped temple towers called ziggurats
👑pharaohs who ruled as god-kings
🦴oracle bones with early Chinese writing
🌾millet farms along the Yellow River
🌴 Mesopotamia: Hammurabi's law code, stepped temple towers called ziggurats · 🐉 Ancient China (Shang): oracle bones with early Chinese writing, millet farms along the Yellow River · 🐊 Ancient Egypt: hieroglyphs carved on temple walls, pharaohs who ruled as god-kings
Hint: Egypt: pyramids, hieroglyphs, pharaohs, mummies. Mesopotamia: cuneiform, ziggurats, Hammurabi, Ur. Indus Valley: planned cities, drains, the Great Bath, an undeciphered script. Shang China: oracle bones, silk, millet, the first written records.
Question 5
The northern Maya lowlands had few rivers on the surface. Where did people get water?
From the Nile
From melting glaciers
From desalinated seawater
From cenotes (natural sinkholes) and stored rainwater
From cenotes (natural sinkholes) and stored rainwater
Hint: The Yucatán is limestone. Rain soaks underground, and sinkholes called cenotes open onto that water.
Question 6
Based on the passage, how could Egypt grow so much food with so little rain?
The Gift of the Nile
Egypt gets very little rain, yet thousands of years ago it fed a large population. The reason was the Nile River. The Greek historian Herodotus called Egypt 'the gift of the Nile.'
Every summer, heavy rains fell far to the south in the highlands of Ethiopia. The water flowed north, and the Nile rose until it spilled over its banks. When the flood went down in autumn, it left a layer of dark, rich silt on the fields. Egyptians called their land Kemet, 'the black land,' after this soil, and the desert beyond it Deshret, 'the red land.'
Farmers planted wheat and barley in the damp silt and harvested them in spring. Because the flood came at about the same time each year, Egyptians kept a calendar of 365 days. Officials measured the river's height with stone gauges called nilometers to predict the harvest and decide how much tax to collect.
Egypt imported all of its food
The yearly flood watered the fields and renewed the soil
Farmers grew food only in the desert
It rained every day in winter
The yearly flood watered the fields and renewed the soil
Hint: Think about what the flood brought each year: water and fresh silt.