Discussion Questions for World Civ Recitation September 10 2012 Jessie Kichigin 1 Some scholars argue that geography is destiny Given what you know about Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies do you agree or disagree with this statement In other words what is the relationship between a group s natural environment and the shape or character of its society I want you to come to class with specific examples Think about the discussion of the Diamond video in class and what you ve read for class Well I definitely think that if you are not in a geographically smart area that you won t have a chance for survival Geography helped the Mesopotamians because it provided a rich soil for them to plant in the Fertile Crescent and because they had so many resources in this area they were able to grow a lot of crops to feed their population Then as the agricultural revolution developed they grew more and more crops expanding their civilization and furthermore increasing their population The same went for Egypt Egypt s location was on the Nile River just a little below the Nile Delta It was able to attain its resources due to the river and the rich soil surrounding it However sometimes floods would occur in these civilizations which would ruin the crops and create problems for the people of the civilization 2 Which theory about the development of writing old or new seems most plausible Why Again come to class with specific examples from article 10 and or your textbook It seems as though there are actually a few theories in place The first is the traditional theory where writing was adopted by the Egyptians from the Mesopotamians and then possibly from the Egyptians to the Indus Valley peoples This is supported by the fact that forms of writing from these places all developed around the same time One historian uses the evidence of tokens as an explanation for the development of writing in the Mesopotamian region According to Denise Schmandt Besserat there were tokens of different shapes found in Iraq Syria and Iran She believes these tokens represented measures of food or numbers of animals The system later evolved into a more complex form where each token is used for different animals processed foods and imported items Then as trade and communication grew she believes that this system grew into a writing form and was adopted by other civilizations But some historians argue with this theory Oates for example thinks the tokens were a means of remembering rather than a genuine recording device Eleanor Robson goes on to say it s hard to know which are tokens and which are beads or weights Also there really isn t any good evidence that suggests the tokens led to cuneiform writing The new theory has been suggested by Baines is that the system of Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics developed separately Evidence suggests that along with Harappa the three civilizations evolved at nearly the same rate and the same time Towards the end article 10 states That would appear a stunning coincidence but some researchers say contact with other groups combined with an indigenous need to convey more complex information might have been the not so coincidental common ingredients that made the Near East and the Indus advance so quickly With this statement doesn t that mean the previous theory and this one go hand in hand I would agree with a mixture of the theory I would think that each civilization had a little bit of a writing system started but then that each system learned from each other as they started trading and communicating The token theory seems unrealistic and I don t agree with it although it was an interesting theory I am sure that each civilization developed their final writing system with help and ideas from each other