River valley civilization can also be referred to as river culture. It is an agricultural nation positioned beside a river. Civilization relates to a society that has settlements which are permanent, central organizations and labor are specialized.  Civilization is typically defined as a well-advanced state of a human society that contains well-developed culture, forms of government, industries and social norms. The four river valley civilization includes Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Yellow River, and the Indus valley. The initial similarity is that they were all located near the river. During this time, rivers were essential to communities. A stream was used to provide food in the form of fish and being strategically located many business activities took place in river banks.  Moreover, they all had a system of government that was hierarchal.  The earliest form of civilization was in Mesopotamia, and it included the first city-states.

Monarchy was the system that they utilized in all the civilizations.  Monarchy is a form of government where the king or queen has all the powers. All the river valley civilization used a particular form of writing to communicate with its members (Anu,15). Agriculture was one of the economic activities that were common to all four civilization. Most of the agriculture was done for home consumption. The harvested grains were also used as a trade tool. People would exchange what they don’t have with what they already have. It was generally a simple way of life. However, fishing was also an essential economic activity along the rivers.  Even though they all had a government, they differed in their structure. The government in Indus was more of religious. In Mesopotamia, they incorporated both monarchy and democratic rule. However, the king had all the powers and was well respected.  In Egypt, a theocracy government was used (Daniel, 97). They all participated in agriculture, but they planted different crops.

Egypt and Mesopotamia developed different religious and political organizations. Egypt came up with a centralized system of government which was led by a pharaoh while the Mesopotamians came up with a decentralized network of governance which was being managed by a king. The Mesopotamians did not believe in the existence of life after death, but the Egyptians thought that there was resurrection after death. That is the reason why Egyptians had own tombs where pharaohs were kept instead of being buried. They believed that a person did not die completely, to them there was life after death. Then, the Egyptians had Pharaoh as a god, but that was not the case in Mesopotamia. In Egypt, they believed that the king was only a mediator between God and the people (Grimes,107).  Moreover, the god and goddesses of Egypt and Mesopotamia varied so much. The variation came as a result of the role they played in society.

Yellow River civilization was most similar to the Mesopotamia civilization. When it comes to comparison, the two are very similar. In Mesopotamia, they had both the monarchial and democratic form of government. In history, one of the earliest society to have a republican form of government was in Mesopotamia. In Yellow River, they had a monarchial government. The only difference here was that Yellow River lacked a free kind of government.  The main crop grown in Mesopotamia was wheat which is the same as the Yellow River.

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