There were four major ancient civilizations and they were all successful in their own ways. The four major civilizations were Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. All of these civilizations are classified as River Valley civilizations and many of the jobs were farming related. Even though all of these river valley civilizations accomplished great things I think that Ancient Mesopotamia has had the most influence in our society today.

I believe that Ancient Mesopotamia has had the most impact in the world today because of the type of government they had, cuneiform, and the architecture. The government of Ancient Mesopotamia is very much like the type of government we have here in the US, there was a king who oversaw the whole nation while small areas of the land were governed by rulers. These areas were called city-states, this form of government gave much more notice to the opinion of the whole nation unlike Egypt for example where whatever Pharaoh said was done. This government took into account the needs and wants of the whole civilization not just one person. Ancient Mesopotamia is also very influential in our world today by creating the first form of writing, it was called cuneiform. This writing system was the first with an alphabet and the basics of this writing system are used in almost all of the languages today. As far as I know there are not many languages without some sort of alphabet. Lastly, the civilization of Ancient Mesopotamia were one of the first to make canals to save time trading goods with other civilizations. Canals of course are still a key part of trading today especially for countries like the US and Canada. Today canals are used for very similar purposes as back in Ancient Mesopotamia, they are used to decrease time and shipping costs when trading with another country.

Each of the other civilizations also did very important things whether is was architecture or literature. Egypt for example is very well known for building the great pyramids as tombs for kings and Pharaohs. My question is are we making tombs like this today, the answer is no. While the pyramids were a great achievement at that time, the legacy of them has not carried into today. Ancient China is very well known for being to first to make paper. While paper is very useful today, the use of paper is declining as the use of technology is increasing. I think that paper will in the next 30 or so years paper will be used even less with the technology being updated, faster and easier to use. The government of Ancient India was that of kings, this type of government was very common back in that time period, but it is not now. Only about 20% of nations today have some sort of royal monarchy, and a lot of these countries have a government like the government of the UK. In the UK, they have a queen right now and multiple princes, but these member of the royal family are really only there for publicity. Parliament is the group that makes the decisions, and while the royal family does have some say in what is done with the country, but they can’t do whatever they want with it. So this type of government is no longer used in most of the countries today.

I think that Ancient Mesopotamia has had the biggest impact on our world today because of their type of government, the invention of cuneiform, and the different types of architecture they made. Even though all of the River Valley Civilizations had many things in common, I believe that they should be set apart as superior to the other civilizations.