Gen Ed - World Civilizations If you were to look back at ancient history and see some of the problems they encountered within their communities, and then jump forward into today, you would see that many of the same struggles they went through are much the same as today. Overpopulation, lack of natural resources, disease, and the struggle for power are some of the things that not even today we have been able to solve.Overpopulation in hunter-gatherer tribes mainly never happened, because they had to carry their children with them, and along with the prolonged juvenile period that they had would make it much to difficult. It is important to understand that this new way of life (sedentism) meant a whole new set of opportunities, and a whole new set of problems as well. (Learning Module) Large families meant that they would have more help in the fields, so family size grew to make life easier.Disease is also something we have failed to conquer today. Our civilization today has made many advances but has not yet cured everything. Disease is closely related to sedentary life. When population size grew it became very difficult to keep living areas clean. Families were sharing close quarters with animals that don't know how to dispose of their own waste properly, thus spreading bacteria. Unlike our ancestors, we have made many advances in the medical field. Relatively harmless childhood illnesses we know today such as chicken pox, which could quite possibly have killed thousands. Although we have made medical advances we are still struggling to make better many of the deadly diseases that we have. The struggle for power has been apparent throughout dating back even to the ancient city in Turkey, called Jericho 8,000 years ago. Along with the close knit communities came crime. Crime and power are closely related because the more that you had something, for our ancient ancestors it was surpluses of crops, for us today it would be mo...
