Welcome back, time travellers!
Yesterday we travelled through 1,000 years of British history. Now we are going to leave Britain and visit the first big cities ever built.
About 5,000 years ago — long, long before Stonehenge was finished — clever people in four different parts of the world all started building big cities.
These four places are called the earliest civilisations.
What is a civilisation?
A civilisation is when many people live together in a clever way. A civilisation usually has:
- Big cities with many houses
- Writing to keep records
- Laws so people are fair
- Kings or rulers
- Religion (gods or beliefs)
- Trade with other places
- Art and music
- Calendars, maths, and science
For most of human history, people were hunter-gatherers (Stone Age!). Civilisation is a very new idea, only about 6,000 years old.
The first four civilisations — at the same time!
Look at this map (in your head):
| Civilisation | Where | When it started |
|---|---|---|
| Sumer | In Iraq today | About 4500 BC |
| Ancient Egypt | In Egypt today, by the Nile | About 3100 BC |
| Indus Valley | In Pakistan and India today | About 3300 BC |
| Shang Dynasty | In northern China | About 1600 BC |
All four started near big rivers. Why? Because rivers give:
- Water for drinking
- Water for growing crops
- Fish to eat
- Boats to move things
- Mud to make bricks
So now let’s visit each one!
1. Sumer (Mesopotamia) — the very first
The first ever civilisation was called Sumer. It was in a land called Mesopotamia, between two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. Today this land is in Iraq.
The Sumerians built the world’s first cities, like:
- Uruk (the biggest!)
- Ur
- Lagash
Each city had a giant tower in the middle called a ziggurat. A ziggurat was made of mud bricks and looked like a step pyramid. People believed gods lived on top.
Sumer’s BIG idea: writing!
The Sumerians invented writing — about 3200 BC!
They pressed wedge-shaped marks into wet clay tablets. The marks made letters. We call this writing cuneiform (say “kew-nee-ih-form”).
We can still read Sumerian writing today. Their oldest stories are about gods, kings, and a hero called Gilgamesh. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest story ever written down.
Other Sumerian inventions
- The wheel (about 3500 BC)
- The plough (a farming tool)
- The first schools
- Maths based on the number 60 (that is why we have 60 minutes in an hour!)
2. Ancient Egypt — the Nile and the pyramids
The Egyptians lived along the River Nile, in the desert of north Africa. The Nile was their lifeline. Every year it flooded and left rich black mud, which was great for growing food.
Egypt had a king called the Pharaoh (say “fair-oh”). The Pharaoh was very, very powerful. People believed he was almost a god.
The pyramids
Egyptians built HUGE stone pyramids as graves for their pharaohs. The most famous is the Great Pyramid of Giza, built around 2560 BC.
- It is 147 metres tall (when new). That is taller than 30 double-decker buses on top of each other!
- It is made of about 2.3 million stone blocks.
- It is 4,500 years old.
- It was the tallest building in the world for over 3,800 years!
Mummies
When a pharaoh died, the Egyptians made a mummy. They:
- Took out the inside organs (yuck!)
- Dried the body with salt for 40 days
- Wrapped it in linen strips
- Put it in a wooden case (sometimes painted gold)
- Buried it inside a pyramid or a tomb
They did this because they believed the person would live again in another world. They put food, jewellery and even toys in the tomb to help.
Hieroglyphics
The Egyptians wrote with little pictures called hieroglyphics. There are over 700 hieroglyphic symbols!
For thousands of years no one could read them. Then in 1799, soldiers found a stone in Egypt called the Rosetta Stone. It had the same words in 3 languages — including hieroglyphics. That is how scholars cracked the code!
You can see the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum in London. It is one of their most famous things.
Famous Egyptians
- Tutankhamun — a young pharaoh who died at 18. His golden mask is famous all over the world!
- Cleopatra — the last pharaoh. She lived 2,000 years ago.
- Ramesses II — a powerful pharaoh who ruled for 67 years!
3. Indus Valley — the cleanest cities
In what is now Pakistan and north India, another civilisation started around the Indus River. We don’t know what they called themselves. So we call them Indus Valley people or Harappan (after one of their cities, Harappa).
They had two big cities:
- Harappa
- Mohenjo-daro
These cities were AMAZING — even by today’s standards.
Why so clever?
- Houses were built in straight rows like a chess board (good city planning!)
- Every house had its own bathroom
- Houses had drains that took dirty water away through pipes under the roads
- They had a giant swimming pool at Mohenjo-daro called the Great Bath
- Most houses had a toilet — yes, 5,000 years ago!
This is amazing because most British people did not have indoor toilets until 100 years ago. The Indus Valley people had them 5,000 years ago!
What they made
- Beautiful clay pots with painted designs
- Tiny stone seals with animals (a bull, a tiger, a unicorn-like creature)
- Jewellery from gold, silver and shells
- Toys for children — including little carts on wheels
A mystery
Around 1900 BC, the Indus Valley civilisation disappeared. We don’t know why. Maybe a flood. Maybe a drought. Maybe an earthquake. Maybe people just left.
Their writing has never been read by anyone. It is one of history’s biggest mysteries.
4. Shang Dynasty — the first Chinese civilisation
Far to the east, in northern China, another civilisation started around the Yellow River (called Huang He). This was the Shang Dynasty (about 1600 BC to 1046 BC).
A “dynasty” means a family of rulers. The Shang were the first big dynasty of China that we have lots of evidence for.
What the Shang did
- Built big cities with palaces for the king
- Made beautiful bronze pots (some weighing 800 kg!)
- Had a king who was buried with treasures and even servants
- Had chariots pulled by horses
- Wrote on bones to ask gods questions
Oracle bones
The Shang would ask their gods things like, “Should we go to war?” or “Will it rain?”
To get an answer, a priest:
- Wrote the question on an animal bone (a turtle shell or cow bone) using picture-writing
- Heated the bone in a fire
- The bone would crack
- The priest read the cracks like an answer
The pictures on the bones became the start of Chinese writing, which is still used today by over 1.4 billion people!
Bronze art
The Shang made amazing things from bronze. Look up “Houmuwu Ding” — a bronze cooking pot weighing 800 kg with a bull’s-face pattern.
Comparing the four civilisations
| Thing | Sumer | Egypt | Indus Valley | Shang |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| River | Tigris + Euphrates | Nile | Indus | Yellow (Huang He) |
| Writing | Cuneiform | Hieroglyphics | Unknown! | Bone-script (early Chinese) |
| Big buildings | Ziggurats | Pyramids | Cities with drains | Palaces + bronze pots |
| Clever bit | Wheel, maths, the first writing | Mummies, pyramids | Toilets and clean cities | Bronze art, oracle bones |
In Year 3, which one will I learn?
In UK schools, most Year 3 classes study Ancient Egypt (because there are so many fun objects and stories).
Some schools instead study Sumer, Indus Valley or Shang. Your teacher will tell you which one!
But it’s nice to know about all four. They all started around the same time, in different parts of the world, with NO contact with each other.
That is one of the most amazing things about history.
Fun facts
- Sumerians drank beer with very long straws — to keep the bits out!
- Egyptian children played with wooden toys, dolls, and a board game called Senet.
- The Indus Valley had standard weights and measures — every brick was the same size, everywhere.
- A Shang dynasty queen called Lady Hao was buried with 400 bronze items, 750 jade objects and 6,900 cowrie shells (used as money).
Words to remember
- Civilisation: a way of life with cities, writing, laws and rulers
- Sumer: the first civilisation, in modern Iraq
- Pharaoh: an Egyptian king
- Pyramid: a giant stone building made as a grave
- Mummy: a body wrapped up to last forever
- Hieroglyphics: Egyptian picture-writing
- Indus Valley: a clean and clever civilisation in Pakistan/India
- Shang Dynasty: the first big Chinese civilisation
- Oracle bone: a bone used to ask gods questions
Talk about it
- The four civilisations all started near rivers. Why do you think rivers are so important?
- Indus Valley people had toilets 5,000 years ago. Why is that surprising?
- Egyptians made mummies because they believed in another world. What do you think?
- The Indus Valley writing has never been read. If you could solve one mystery in history, would it be this one?
Quick summary
- 4 civilisations started about 5,000 years ago, near big rivers.
- Sumer (Iraq): the first writing (cuneiform), the wheel, the first cities.
- Ancient Egypt: pyramids, mummies, hieroglyphics, the Pharaoh.
- Indus Valley: clean cities with drains and toilets!
- Shang Dynasty (China): bronze art and oracle bones.
Next article
Tomorrow we visit Ancient Greece — the home of the Olympic Games, the first democracy, and Greek myths. See you then!