Describe three ways in which the early river valley civilizations were alike, and three ways in which were different from one another.

Answer: All of them obviously settled along a major river which was the main source of water, transportation and irrigation for crops. The Egyptian Civilization settled along the Nile, the Mesopotamians along the Tigris and Eufrates, the Indus Valley Civilization along the Indus River (located in modern day Pakistan), and the Yellow River Civilization or Early Chinese Civilization along the Yellow River.

They based their food production on cereal crops: egyptians, mesopotamians and indians cultivated wheat and barley, and the chinese cultivated rice.

At first, they were semi-nomadic, but with time began sedentary, started to build cities, and unified in kindgoms.

Three ways in which they were different:

With time they unified into large kingdoms, but the exact time in which this happened was different. For example, by the third millenium BC, Egypt had already unified into a single kingdom rule by a pharaon, while the different chinese tribes only unified by around 1500 BC.

They obviously spoke vastly different languages, and had different cultures.

While Mesopotamia and Egypt had frequent contact, the Indus Valley civilization and the Yellow River civilization were more or less isolated.