The Great River Civilizations

Abstract

In the first part of the fourth millennium B.C. a group of cultural centers developed in southwestern Asia. Probably emerging through coalescence from a web of small and, it would seem, insignificant Neolithic villages, impressive cities formed in the river valleys of the Indus, the Euphrates–Tigris and the Nile. Spreading out to form nets with other, in part more peripheral, urban centers, the classical civilizations bearing their names were born in these river valleys (Fig. 2.1).