ABSTRACT
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION (c. 3000-1500 B.C.)
The transition from pre-historic Neolithic culture to civilization seems to have involved in every case two things combined: the establishment of settled agricultural communities instead of nomadic food-gathering communities and, in those settled communities, the development of urban centers with literate religious and social hierarchies in control of irrigation projects. The first condition is found (independently, so far as is now known) in at least four centers: Mexico and Central America; the great bend of the Niger River in Africa; the Yellow River valley in China; and in Mesopotamia (the “land between the waters” of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers). Priority in time belongs to Mesopotamia. And there also the second condition of civilization, the urban center, first emerged.
