The Influence of Geography on History Dbq

The land we live on is a vital part of the lives we live and this has been shown throughout history. Geography shaped the lives of people of the ancient world socially, economically, and politically. Socially, geography impacted the interactions of people and provided the tools for culture to develop. The land itself provided the early base of ancient economies through both agriculture and trade. Politically geography often determined whether a ruler maintained his empire or whether he fell.

Geography impacted the social aspects of all early societies by limiting their interactions and helped establish the early signs of culture. Societies, especially those in China were severely limited to who they could interact with. Due to the surrounding Gobi Desert and Himalaya and Kunlun Mountains societies were limited in their social capacity (Doc 2). This meant that the people could really only interact with themselves and spread ideas among each other. Due to its isolation by natural deserts and mountains the Chinese societies, such as the Zhou and Shang, may have been limited to expanding fully culturally and spatially stopping the imperialistic conquests of China’s early dynasties. Geography played a large role in the way people began to develop culture. Early forms of culture included baskets, clothing, claypots and writing such as oracle bones, which were all made from the natural surroundings of the settlers’ environments (Doc 1). These early indications of culture show the way people used the environment and land they lived on to distinguish themselves from one another. However it isn't made clear if there may have been earlier forms of culture and expression that have gone unnoticed. Similar to creating objects directly from the environment, culture came from the architecture of the early cities. For example the architecture at Mohenjo-Daro shows that religion played a large part of life, by creating a temple for the gods (Doc 7). The architecture shows the way the people built into the Earth and used it to their advantage. The concepts and ways of building underground, as well as over, show the way the people thought and what they valued such as religion and government, which had larger buildings. The citadel, built to protect the city indicates the desire of the people to isolate themselves and keep others out. The various structures together could indicate a polytheistic religion with some gods being more important than others. Despite this we do not fully know how the city looked, because all that remains are computer generated images and the remains, which cannot give the full image of what Mohenjo-Daro looked like.

Geography established the early foundations for different economies. People in the Old Stone Age were hunter gatherers who fished and hunted (Doc 1). During the Paleolithic Period didn’t have any sort of planned or practiced agricultural methods for getting food. These early nomads ate the animals