The River Valleys Gallery: Four Cases, Four Rivers

Read museum labels, a wall map and a climate chart to explain where the first cities grew.

The gallery introduction

Read the panel at the gallery entrance. Then answer the questions.

Four Valleys, One Pattern

1The four cases in this gallery come from places thousands of miles apart: the Nile Valley in Egypt, the plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley in what is now Pakistan, and the valley of the Huang He, or Yellow River, in northern China. Between about 3500 and 1500 BCE, some of the world's first cities grew up in each of these valleys. The wall chart beside this panel gives each site's latitude and longitude and the rain it gets in a year today.

2Latitude measures how far a place is north or south of the equator. Longitude measures how far it is east or west of the prime meridian. All four sites lie north of the equator and east of the prime meridian, in a band between about 24° and 34° north. At these latitudes, summers are long and hot, so crops can grow for many months of the year. Rain is another matter. As the chart shows, most of the sites get very little of it.

3In lands this dry, a river was a lifeline. The Nile rose each summer after heavy rains fell in the highlands of East Africa, far upstream. The Indus rose with melting Himalayan snow and summer monsoon rains. Both floods spread water and fresh silt over the fields. The Tigris and Euphrates flooded in spring, when snow melted in the mountains to the north. Their floods were harder to predict, and in some years they came just as the barley was ripening. The Huang He carries so much fine yellow soil, called loess, that the soil gave the river its name.

4Rivers gave more than water. Boats carried grain, stone and other goods along them. People who shared a river had reasons to work together, digging canals to carry water to new fields and building earth banks to hold back floodwater. Rivers could also destroy. A flood that rose too high could wash away a village, and one that stayed too low could mean a poor harvest and hunger. The objects in this gallery show some of the ways people learned to live with their rivers.

A Mesopotamian farmer's barley is nearly ready to cut in the spring. Based on paragraph 3, why might the farmer be worried?

A. Monsoon rains might soak the grain before it dried.
B. The river might freeze and stop the water in the canals.
C. Loess soil might blow onto the field and bury it.
D. A spring flood might reach the field before the harvest.

Circle the sentence from paragraph 4 that explains how a river could lead neighbors to cooperate.

Boats carried grain, stone and other goods along them.People who shared a river had reasons to work together, digging canals to carry water to new fields and building earth banks to hold back floodwater.A flood that rose too high could wash away a village, and one that stayed too low could mean a poor harvest and hunger.

Based on paragraphs 2 and 3, which pair of conditions best explains why early cities grew at these four sites?

A. A long, warm growing season and river water
B. Thick forests and many wild animals to hunt
C. Cool summers and plenty of rain in most months
D. High mountains for defense and few floods

Walk the cases

Use the wall chart, the map notes and the case labels.

Wall chart

Gallery Sites (rain: modern yearly averages, rounded)
Case	Site	Latitude, longitude	Yearly rain	River
1	Aswan, Egypt	24°N, 33°E	less than 1 in	Nile
2	Babylon, Mesopotamia	33°N, 44°E	about 4 in	Euphrates
3	Harappa, Indus Valley	31°N, 73°E	about 8 in	Indus branch
4	Banpo, China	34°N, 109°E	about 22 in	Wei, a branch of the Huang He

Map notes: The Sahara stretches west of the Nile Valley. The Syrian Desert lies west of the Euphrates. The Thar Desert lies east of the Indus Valley. North of Banpo rises the Loess Plateau, a high land of thick yellow soil.

Case 1. Model of a Nilometer, Elephantine Island, Aswan. A stone stairway runs down into the Nile, with marks cut into the wall to show how high the flood rose. Egyptians measured the river this way for thousands of years; royal records carved about 2400 BCE already list each year's flood height. Officials compared each reading with past years to predict the size of the harvest and the tax farmers could pay. (The stairway standing at Aswan today was rebuilt in later times.)
Case 2. Model of a shaduf, Mesopotamia. A long pole swings on a post, with a bucket at one end and a heavy weight of clay or stone at the other. Using it, one farmer can lift water from a canal onto a field that sits higher than the water. Mesopotamian art shows the shaduf more than 4,000 years ago, and Egyptian farmers later used it too.
Case 3. Baked bricks and a platform model, Harappa, about 2500 BCE. Indus builders baked their bricks hard in kilns, so water did not soften them the way it softens sun-dried mud brick. They raised many buildings, and some whole neighborhoods, on high platforms of packed earth and brick.
Case 4. Painted jar with millet grains, Banpo village, about 4500 BCE. Banpo's farmers grew millet, a grain that needs less water than rice, in soft loess soil they could turn with stone hoes and digging sticks. Their village was not yet a city, but later Chinese cities grew in the same river valley.

A label fell off its case. It reads only "31°N, 73°E."

Word bank: Nile · Euphrates · Indus · Wei

The label belongs to a site beside the River or one of its branches.

Use the wall chart and Case 1. Why was the Nilometer reading so important to officials at Aswan?

A. The reading told farmers when the spring rains would start.
B. Aswan gets almost no rain, so the harvest rested on the flood.
C. The flood height showed how cold the next winter would be.
D. Aswan is the farthest north site, so its flood came last.

Draw a line from each case to the river problem it helped people handle.

Case 1: Nilometer
Case 2: Shaduf
Case 3: Bricks on platforms
Case 4: Millet in loess soil

A. Getting water up to fields above a canal
B. Farming with moderate rain and simple tools
C. Keeping buildings above high water
D. Planning for a flood that changed size each year

A farmer near Babylon has a field about 6 feet above the water in a nearby canal. No rain falls all summer. Which object from the gallery would help this farmer most?

A. The Nilometer in Case 1
B. The brick platform in Case 3
C. The shaduf in Case 2
D. The millet jar in Case 4

A traveler goes from the site at 33°N, 44°E to the site at 31°N, 73°E. In which general direction does the traveler go?

A. East
B. North
C. South
D. West

Sort each action from the gallery. Were people using the river's water, or protecting themselves from the river?

Lifting canal water onto a field with a shadufRaising neighborhoods on high brick platformsDigging canals to carry water to new fieldsBaking bricks hard so water cannot soften themBuilding earth banks along the riverShipping grain and stone by boat

Using the river's water	Protecting against the river

The guest book

Use everything in the gallery.

10.

Choose TWO pieces of evidence that together best support this claim: farmers at these sites depended on rivers more than on rain.

A. Harappa's builders baked their bricks hard in kilns.
B. With a shaduf, a farmer could lift canal water onto a field.
C. Aswan and Babylon get about 4 inches of rain a year or less.
D. Banpo's farmers turned soft loess soil with stone hoes.

11.

A visitor wrote in the guest book: "The first cities grew in river valleys just because rivers were easy to travel on." Do you agree, disagree or partly agree? Make a claim, give at least two pieces of evidence from the wall chart, the panel or the cases, and explain your reasoning.