Geographical Benefits to Countries and Civilizations

Many geographical features can be helpful to a country. A few examples are most of the ancient civilizations of the world. All of them were formed on rivers, more specifically river valleys, including the Indus River Valley, the Tiber, and the Tigris-Euphrates. The oldest civilizations formed on rivers because humans need water for life. Even today all huge cities are on rivers, lakes, or some sort of water source.

            The Chinese civilization formed on a couple natural defenses and rivers. The natural defenses include the Gobi Desert, the Himalayas and the surrounding seas. The seas covering the eastern part of China make it not very vulnerable to attack from the east. The Gobi Desert provides defense from the west because of the difficulty in passing the desert and the Himalayas to the west and south are all but impossible to travel through. This makes China a nearly impossible place to attack.

            Greece is also a geographically beneficial place to start a civilization. Surrounding all of Greece are many seas, the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean. This makes the Greek civilizations very seafaring, with the exception of Sparta. It also protects Greece from attack from anywhere except from Greeks themselves.

            Another geographical benefit would be climate. The greatest example of this is the Russian winter. No large army can pass through Russia in the winter and survive. Both Hitler and Napoleon, two of the greatest conquerors of all time were defeated by the Russian winter.

            Rivers and seas are also beneficial to countries because they create trade, drinking water, and agriculture. The Greek civilizations traded a lot because of how much coastline is on Greece. Another example is Rome, they traded a lot because Italy is a thin peninsula and also has a lot of coastline on it.

            Population can also be beneficial to a country. Population makes the country have a larger workforce as well as a large army. An example of this in the ancient world is Persia; Persia covered a vast area of land, causing it to have a huge population, this meant the Persian army was massive, up to six hundred thousand men, and was able to conquer many other countries.

            Today China has a large population, this makes China have a massive workforce and therefore a massive economy, with many people working. It also has the largest military in the world, which if it were tested would compare to any military in the world, by sheer power in numbers.