How far is the water supply reason for the rise of civilisation?

Question

How far is the water supply reason for the rise of civilisation?

Answer 1

is more easy to catch fish and wash if they stay more near to a river than up a mountain

Answer 2

Without water, there is no civilization.

Why do you think Egypt began on the banks of the Nile instead of the middle of the Sahara?

Answer 3

Ready availability of drinkable drinking water is a bodily requirement to avoid dehydration and to help get rid of the metabolic wastes generated by homeostasis and cellular digestion. Water is the preferred solvent and transport medium of most living organisms. When you become dehydrated you die inside out from the combination of excessive accumulation of unremoved cellular toxic wastes and the lack of necessary nutrients to your cells. So as you can see ,clean water, after clean air, is essential to most water-based life forms,esp stinky carnivores/omnivores and slow digesting herbivores.

Flowing bodies of water transport away the condensed evacuations of the organisms generating bodily wastes! So groups like to live near downhill flowing sources of water. LOL--you can't get more basic that this to explaining the rise of civilized societies that learned to give up the hunter-gatherer stage to move into rainy regions or to the irrigated growth of grains and the watering of livestock in the agricultural stage of human societies. BTW we are part of the Planet's watercycle and we rely on water continuing to move about to do the work it does to keep living things alive as it has done in the past. Global Warming caused climate changes are posing a threat to many life forms dependent on the way water moves around to redistribute the energy absorbed from the sun.

This is a wonderful Q which you can creatively research from a variety of pov's based on the role of water in human living activities!

Besides having water available for drinking, crop irrigation, livestock raising,water was a means of waste removal, & sanitation.Water that moves was used as a source of power for grinding grains. Water bodies made transportation of large cargoes and movement of people easier than transportation and movement over land. Lastly, waterways connected people and cultures facilitating people mobility & the transport of goods. Water facilitated trade,exploration and population growth. Technologies developed around using water in all its phases to do things that made living more comfortable. Did you know Thales, the 1st to seek natural rather than supernatural expanations of the world,thought water was the basic constituent of all the things and events we observed. Water shaped thought and the way people think! Daoism a philosophy-religion is based on analogies to water. So you see water has shaped the different ways human civilizations have developed. It continues to shape us now more so than ever since water is at the core of our being and an essential element in all of our daily activities. Hopefully we will stop contaminating our water resources and find the ways to use it wisely. Otherwise we could be headed into world wars over water-rights.  I could go on, but you get the basic idea. Again, thanks for the Q.

Answer 4

Water has always been a critical resource. Rivers like the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, and the Indus supplied both enough water for irrigating crops and enough water for riparian transport, which is very easy going downstream. This ease of transport supported a lively commerce in trade, and since then civilization has never looked back.

Answer 5

Every Pacific Island that didn't naturally have fresh water didn't naturally have any inhabitants either.  Civilizations that lose theirs find themselves in decline.  Kinda like when Ethiopia has a really bad drought year that leads to famine.