A quote by Barbra Tuchman states, “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.” This quote means without evidence of the past, there is no history. Without history there is nothing to look back on and compare to the present. This essay is basically going compare and contrast two civilizations, Mesopotamia and The Shang/Zhou Dynasty politically and socially. If you do not know what Mesopotamia is just remember the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and if you cannot seem to recall what the Shang and Zhou dynasty are remember the Mandate of Heaven as a clue but I will go into further detail throughout the essay.
Mesopotamia has four civilizations known as the Fertile Crescent, Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon. The first civilization I am…show more content… Like I said above in the introduction Mesopotamia has two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates River that flow from the top highlands. Both rivers were essential to form the development of Mesopotamia. Sometimes the rivers rose to such high levels that many villages were destroyed. In effort to protect the people and their communities from the flooding surrounding areas teamed up to control and direct the rivers. Irrigation systems and ditches were also very essential to the dry parts of farms. A city called the Sumerians within Mesopotamia had very few resources to survive but they made use of any and everything they had. Traders along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers brought many great goods and riches to the area in effort of their survival. During the 1300’s a dangerous killing spree was happening; The Black Death. The Black Death was a time many people dread because bubonic plague