Shang And Mesopotamia Similarities

Shang dynasty and the Mesopotamia civilization are two major ancient civilizations in Asia, they shares the same continent and also some similarities in economy and technological development, but different natural condition helps two civilization develop their own distinction such as their different political system.

For the economy, Two civilizations shares many similarities and several difference. Both civilization relies on fertile soil and River to grow foods to increase population. In Mesopotamia, people relies on two main river, the Tigris and the Euphrates. In Shang, people depend on the water in Yellow river. Those main rivers share a similarity that all of them flood constantly, which force local peoples to develop better irrigation

Both ancient Shang and the Mesopotamia civilization depend on Bronze. In Shang, the Bronze is made to tools for agriculture , Bronze tools make the planting process more efficient, thus the civilization own more foods and goods for domestic trading. Same thing happened in Mesopotamia, people use bronze to make tools and produce more goods. Since the Mesopotamia people is better at international trading through ocean, bronze has a deeper significance for them, bronze helps the people to trade further into the ocean, it is believed that Mesopotamia people have traveled and traded to Britain and Afghanistan for resource with the help of the Bronze. Another major development in this period is the writing system, both of the two civilization own pretty completed writing system, but two writing system are believed to be invented for different purpose, Shang people develop the oracle for mainly political and the religious purpose, people and the king need record religious and political issues.In contrast, Mesopotamia writing system is developed for the record of

Civilizations in Mesopotamia is composed by city states, which has a powerful urban king who claims great authority in his city state and dominate nearly all public issues. However, there is not neither a centralized government nor a dominating powerful state, so states stay autonomous, states can conduct their religious activities, define boundaries for farmland and declaring wars and dealing with slavery captured during the battle. Political system in Ancient Shang dynasty is different, cities have never own highly respected autonomy, the king owns great authority from the ancestors as he claimed. The king also claimed that he exclusively own the ability to communicate with the god, actually the king is regarded as not only a king, but also a god. He actually own all farmland in Shang dynasty. People are not allowed to conduct any religious ceremony.

Similarities and difference make flourishing diverse civilizations around the world, in the case comparing the Mesopotamia civilization and ancient Shang dynasty, they share similarities in economy and technology with several difference. They differ the most in the political