Cradles of Civilization

Name the six regions in the world where, according to current archaeological data, civilization has emerged independently.
Souce: Wikipedia
Quiz by cerealkiller
Rate:
Last updated: October 2, 2017
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedSeptember 25, 2017
Times taken29,435
Average score66.7%
Rating4.34
1:30
Enter answer here
0
 / 6 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
Answer
The Andes
China
Egypt
Indus Valley
Mesoamerica
Mesopotamia
+8
Level 80
Oct 3, 2017
I doubt anyone will get 100% on that one first time...
+58
Level 82
Oct 3, 2017
Got 100% first time 💪 Peru and Mexico worked for the Americas :)
+5
Level 73
Oct 3, 2017
Peru and Guatemala for me
+6
Level 59
Nov 15, 2017
Peru, mexico, egypt, mesopotamia, india and china did it for me! If they asked for the actual names written in the quiz it would definitely be much harder.
+3
Level 71
Mar 8, 2018
I also tried Mexico and Peru. :) And got 100% on first try.
+3
Level 64
Dec 19, 2019
i tried inca+maya and it didn't work so I went with andes and mesoamerica.
+5
Level 51
May 7, 2020
Yeah, REALLY EASY!
+4
Level 59
Sep 18, 2020
I said Norte Chico. Admittedly, I got that from 'The History of the World, I Guess' video.
+1
Level 65
Dec 8, 2020
same haha
+1
Level 62
Jan 16, 2021
I did indus, yellow, nile, mexico, andes, and mesopotamia.
+1
Level 67
Feb 5, 2021
I did India, China, Iraq, Peru, Mexico and Egypt
+1
Level 60
Mar 4, 2022
Nile works for Egypt
+6
Level 92
Oct 3, 2017
I got 100% on the first time because typing countries names instead of the regions worked
+1
Level 51
Nov 15, 2017
same here, also with mexico and peru
+18
Level 82
Oct 3, 2017
I did easily. But there are some other maybes that could be on the list... Australia, New Guinea/Indonesia, Nigeria, and there may have been two independent locations in China. Some of this depends on how exactly civilization is defined. Also "the Hilly Flanks" though this overlaps with Mesopotamia. Emergence of civilization around Sudan/Ethiopia may have been indpendent from Egypt or may have been connected... and Egypt and Mesopotamia may have also been linked and not independent.... and there is some evidence that civilization in the Indus Valley was just an offshoot of Mesopotamian civilization.
+10
Level 17
Feb 20, 2020
bruh
+8
Level 82
Sep 18, 2020
what? I'm interested in the topic...
+1
Level 76
Mar 22, 2024
No need to show off about it, though. Was there no one within earshot you could have blathered on to?
+1
Level 71
Jan 29, 2021
There's also this and this. I originally encountered an article about this culture in National Geographic. I'm not an expert on cradles of civilization, but given that Scotland is very far from Mesopotamia and Egypt, which would be the other closest cradles, it seems like it could be independent to me. As for the Amazonian one, it *might* be an offshoot of Andean civilization but I'm not sure.
+2
Level 85
Nov 15, 2017
People will, I only missed Egypt, one of the more obvious ones.
+1
Level 73
Nov 15, 2017
Well, I did. But I'm an archaeologist, so it probably doesn't count. :p
+3
Level 52
Nov 15, 2017
Central America worked, too.
+2
Level 32
Nov 15, 2017
maybe you just didn't get it the first time. I thought of norte chico then no...then aztecs and said mexico. then peru yay
+1
Level 46
Nov 16, 2017
I got 100% the first time without peaking :)
+1
Level 59
Jan 29, 2018
I did.
+1
Level 59
May 9, 2018
I did, and had 0:52 on the clock
+1
Level 59
May 23, 2018
I did, using modern country names though.
+1
Level 37
Oct 7, 2018
^ I did. - Using mesopotamia and mesoamerica. (Didn't get Egypt because I was concentrating on thinking of a name for North Africa that would match Mesopotamia and mesoamerica).
+1
Level 66
Dec 14, 2018
I did. How dare you doubt me? It was easy
+1
Level 79
Sep 18, 2020
I did! (I typed, China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mexico and Peru)
+1
Level 56
Nov 17, 2022
I did
+1
Level 43
Dec 3, 2022
I got mine first try.

Egypt and China are obvious.

I swore old Persia was in Iran, so tried Iraq and got it. Forget the other I typed maybe India.

I know Peru and Mexico have tons of old artifacts and temples so figured them.

+1
Level 77
Oct 3, 2017
What about Vinča culture

? Old enough?

+5
Level 82
Oct 3, 2017
Yeah that's another one. It's not about age it's about whether or not civilization arose independent of other civilizations. It's still not known conclusively if civilization developed in the Balkans by itself or if it was the result of migrations out of nearby Asia.
+1
Level 77
Jan 24, 2018
Hah, then this quiz does not have any sense.
+1
Level 77
Jan 24, 2018
From where in Asia? Where is that civilization in Asia?
+5
Level 82
Sep 14, 2018
From Egypt and Mesopotamia via the Levant and Asia Minor, of course. If you get to the Bosphorous there is only about 800 meters between the Balkans and Asia there.
+1
Level 60
Nov 15, 2017
Shouldn't Turkey be in there too?
+1
Level 82
Nov 15, 2017
Almost certainly an offshoot of Mesopotamia
+1
Level 80
Nov 15, 2017
I only got Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. The instructions weren't very clear about what you were exactly looking for. Bad quiz.
+9
Level 50
Nov 15, 2017
Talk about a sore loser :)
+7
Level 82
Nov 15, 2017
The instructions are very clear. You just didn't know the answers.
+1
Level 70
Nov 15, 2017
I have to agree. Quiz felt weird to take. Some of these areas are frequently referred to by their location and some aren't. Eg. you can know Olmecs and type it in and be kind of at a loss for "Mesoamerica."
+2
Level 82
Nov 16, 2017
Do you know "Mexico" and "Peru?"
+2
Level 82
Nov 16, 2017
Though, again, if you read much at all about the answers you would see terms like Mesoamerica all the time.
+1
Level 49
Nov 16, 2017
Very interesting. I recently watched a series originally aired 1 or 2 years ago which investigated archaeological evidence and claims but concluded in the end that humans had still originated in Africa. I personally wasn't convinced that people made it right down from Alaska to the tip of South America with the dates given though.
+1
Level 37
Dec 5, 2017
Why not? - Ever hear of canoes and kayaks, camels, llamas? - These were all modes of early transportation. (And, please let's not overlook the alien spaceships!)
+6
Level 82
Sep 14, 2018
The estimates I've seen say it took 5,000 - 10,000 years. You don't think you could walk the length of the Americas if you had 5,000 years?
+6
Level 82
Sep 18, 2020
Also the origin of humans and the origins of civilization are very different things. By the time that humans started creating civilization - settling down from their hunter/gatherer lifestyles to practice agriculture and animal husbandry, make pottery and build cities - homo sapiens had already spread out and populated pretty much the entire planet. At least 4-6 separate times, and likely more, those humans spread out over the globe independently (without any outside help or influence) invented agriculture and/or animal husbandry, and thus started civilization. If civilization started in one area (like Iraq), and then from there spread outward to other areas (like Syria, Turkey, and Greece) then we would not call the latter places cradles of civilization. It's difficult to determine where exactly and how exactly this happened, though, as early civilizations typically don't leave behind much evidence of their existence. And agriculture always predates writing.
+4
Level 49
Nov 16, 2017
Although rereading the title it is where *civilization* emerged, not where humans were originally 'born'.
+1
Level 82
Sep 18, 2020
right
+1
Level 17
Feb 20, 2020
I put down Meso America, Andes, India, China, Mesopotamia, egypt and got it on first time
+1
Level 66
Sep 18, 2020
All my life thought that mesoamerica included the Inca Empire as well. :S I even had to double check it. Awesome trivia.
+2
Level 61
Sep 18, 2020
Please accept "Fertile Crescent" for Mesopotamia.
+1
Level 68
Sep 18, 2020
Don't know a lot about this subject so I found it an interesting, thought provoking quiz.
+2
Level 44
Sep 18, 2020
Thanks Bill Wurtz
+1
Level 59
Sep 18, 2020
Hello, fellow JetPunk users! I've been working on a quiz for quite some time. It's easily been the most effort I've put into a quiz. I'm pretty unknown, so I'm commenting here to try and get noticed. Try my pretty hard quiz at https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/322930/word-scramble-all-countries
+1
Level 60
Sep 18, 2020
Thanks to my world history teacher, this was easy.
+1
Level 54
Sep 18, 2020
didn't get Mesoamerica... but I tried the Olmec, Mayan, Aztec and Incas...
+1
Level 66
Sep 19, 2020
Got all. "Peru" and "Mexico" helped me out.

Did it a second time to see what else was accepted.

"Guatemala" also works for Mesoamerica.

"Iraq" also works for Mesopotamia.

"Yellow" also works for China.

"Pakistan" and "India" also works for Indus Valley.

+2
Level 64
Sep 20, 2020
I'm glad I read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" a few months ago. :)
+1
Level 77
Sep 27, 2020
I know that these six are the commonly academically accepted "cradles of civilization," so this isn't a correction. It's just that "civilization" is a very loosely defined term - some define it as when people abandon nomadism and settle down to domesticate plants, and others define it as the first appearance of a unifying, governing state over these settlements. However, even if we're using the latter, I really think academia is leaving out dozens of potential examples. One example that jumps out to me, just because I live in it, is the Eastern Agricultural Complex of North America. They started cultivating plants and building mounds thousands of years BCE, and at one point, the central city of Cahokia was as big as contemporaneous London, with a state that developed separately from Mesoamerica and hundreds of years before Columbus.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Agricultural_Complex

wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound_Builders

wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia

Again, this comment is just for fun!

+2
Level 77
Dec 30, 2022
The only true cradle is Mesopotamia, because Western civilization arose from that and it is the basis of modern day civilization.