Geographic roots of primordial civilizations (on 120th anniversary of publishing the L. I. Mechnikov’s treatise «Civilizations and the great historical rivers»). Article II

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the analysis of ancient civilizations of India and China. The processes of geographic civilization focuses creation, expansion of its «vital space» by the way of further development, influence of the territory’s landscape structure on the development of agriculture, the economic basis of a civilization, the role of natural environment in spiritual culture development, significance of external relations and geographic horizon are considered. The attempt has been made to find out the reasons of ancient traditions’ sustainability and gap of the civilizations in scientific-technical and economic progress in the early modern era. The two landscape types are clearly distinguished in the group of «river» civilizations: a) oasitic-river type, appropriate to extra arid zones of tropical and subtropical deserts and b) monsoonal-river type, specific to the monsoonal region of Eurasia in the latitude range from pre-subtropics to the sub-equatorial belt. The first type (the Nile valley of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus valley) existed solely due to the transit runoff; its agriculture is only possible through irrigation. The fresh water source for the second type (Ganges basin and Eastern China) is either transit runoff or atmosphere precipitation, and the agriculture is combined, rairn-fed and irrigative. Individual features of every «river» civilization, particularly its development potential, time of its existence, sustainability of ancient traditions, etc, are in many ways dependant on its geographic macro-location (location in the system of landscape macro-regions, on the ways of migration flows and trade routes, et al), on the area and landscape structure complexity of populated space. Therein, the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Eastern China may serve as the examples of dramatic contrast.