Geography's Effect on Growth of Civilization

Geography has the ability to make or break a civilization and decides how a civilization will interact with other civilizations. Civilizations grow because geography affects both their surroundings and how easily they can reach other peoples. Greece and the Islamic Empire are two great examples of how geography can affect a civilizations growth and interaction with other people. China, Rome and Mesopotamia are other examples with different ways of growth.

Mesopotamia is the “birthplace of humanity” because it is the spot of the first human civilization. Mesopotamia grew in the Fertile Crescent, one of the best regions for development and farming. Because of the abundance of food in the Fertile Crescent whether it was animals or crops, the hunter-gatherer tribes did not fight each other that much. Instead, when one tribe met up with another, the highest officials, chiefs in the tribes would have their daughters married into the other tribe. This was used to prevent intermarriage and was used to create diversity as well. The tribes also used this time to exchange ideas and techniques. The only major geographical issue the Mesopotamians had was the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Not every civilization was as well-off as the Mesopotamians.

China had a much different growing path than Mesopotamia. Unlike Mesopotamia, China had to deal with geographical hindrances such as mountains and deserts. China developed separately from other early civilizations because they were blocked off from them by a desert, grasslands, and a mountain range. The Tibet mountain range separated China from India, while to the north of this mountain range, a vast desert and grasslands separated China from the Fertile Crescent and from Ukraine to...

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...nly people the Muslims do not get along with too well are the European Christians. These two empires were so much alike that they hated each other and constantly fought, leading to both of their downfalls. Like Rome, the Islamic Empire fell apart because of all of the diversity within the Empire, but when the Empire separated, it broke into smaller divisions of Islam. This in a way kept the empire together, but in reality they had grown extremely far apart. As Islam grew, trade within Arabia grew greatly, making the coastal cities wealthy and powerful.

These five civilizations were impacted by geography in their own separate ways. They each managed to find a way to work with their geography to grow and expand into large civilizations. Each of these civilizations was impacted by another in one way or another, and was a foundation for the next civilization after it.