by Dave Franklin

Created on: April 29, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

River Valleys have always been significant in the development of early civilizations. Many of the first cities have been founded in the lower parts of large rivers where they meet the sea and there are many reasons for this. Large rivers afford many benefits.

Firstly they provide a large amount of easily accessible fresh water, the stable commodity for any population, water not only for drinking but also for cooking, washing and as a resource for building and all the other trades that develop in an organised population. The river itself provides more than just water though, the very force of the flow acts as the motorways of the ancient world allowing easy travel down towards the coastal population centres bringing in trade and supply from the outlying areas.

Food was also to be found in large quantities in river valleys, marine life in many forms, especially in the estuaries and deltas would provide a wealth of opportunity to feed a population.

With the development of agriculture, thought to have its roots around 4000BC, the large amount of water becomes the sustaining force in this new fixed society that has taken over from the earlier hunter gather culture of the Mesolithic era. With farmland to be worked, irrigation systems were developed and again the river itself was the source of this.

There were a number of prominent cultures that arose as the direct result of their close proximity to major rivers.

The best known is the Egyptian culture which developed an urbanised society between 4000-3000 BC and owed its total existence to the river Nile which rises in the African highlands and flows north to the Mediterranean Sea. There is a seasonal phenomenon that makes the Nile particularly important, in the form of an inundation of minerals that is pushed down the river and which makes the farmlands surrounding the river very fertile. The Delta regions of the Nile was home to many of the major urban centres of this early empire and many of those cities continued to thrive and prosper long after the old order of the ancient Egyptian empire had been swept away.

At a similar time the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris played host to a number of dominant cultures. Mesopotamia, "the land between two rivers" played host to Assyria, Babylonia and further back in time the enigmatic Sumerians. These rivers provided links with the northern tribes of the northern mountain regions and the Persian Gulf allowed trade routes to India and North Africa.

To the east of Mesopotamia we find the Indus valley Culture that rose to prominence in the second millennium BC and again was supported by a major river system and all the benefits that it confers.

Even on a smaller level, examples can be found at Jericho on the river Jordan, a city that may be up to 8000 years old and western European valleys such as the Loire and the Rhine.

River Valleys remained an important stepping-stone on the rise of civilization and even today play a major role in travel, trade and industry.

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