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Q8. Although rivers provided many benefits, they also created challenges for early societies. Discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of settling near rivers.
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This question is about the river itself.
Suggested answer.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Water
for drinking, animals and daily use
Floods
could destroy homes, crops and stored grain
Fertile alluvial soil
left behind by floods - the Nile's
kemet
Rivers could
change course or dry up
- there are sites in the
dried river belt of Sarasvati
Irrigation
through canals, ditches and reservoirs
Canals and dams needed
constant repair
, year after year
Transport and trade
by boat, far easier than by land
Disputes over water
between settlements
Clay and reeds for
bricks, pottery and papyrus
Environmental degradation
and pressure on farmland - this weakened Babylon
Rivers
linked civilisations
- Mesopotamia traded with Meluhha by sea
Total
dependence on one river
- if it failed, everything failed
