Читать книгу World History For Dummies - Peter Haugen - Страница 54

Although Jericho grew at a desert oasis (a prehistoric pit stop, if you will), it wasn’t far from the River Jordan. Other early cities, those of the best-known early large-scale civilizations, formed along rivers in Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq), Egypt, India, and China.

River floods spread rich, silt-laden mud. Besides being fun to squish around in, this mud built up over eons and enriched the soil of the valleys where organized human society would first take hold on a large scale. Good soil and readily available water enabled primitive farmers to increase their annual yields and feed ever-larger populations. It follows that early cities, early legal codes, and systems of counting and writing — all elements of civilization — would also arise in these river valleys.