- relevant for [[Arais Delta]] & the [[Oena]] region. > [!quote] [[Why didn’t civilization develop around the Rhine river the way it did on the Nile, Indus, Fertile Crescent, etc]] > There are examples of old civilizations that didn’t live on alluvial floodplains. River deltas are among them (for example, in Peru), for similar reasons – flooding and silt deposition. Or some coastal areas where a rich source of fish can supplement land resources for a surplus of food calories. Nor are the conditions sufficient, meaning that you still need a farming culture to use that floodplain, you still need whatever factors permit populations to grow and organize. I’m saying that large alluvial floodplains greatly increase the chance that ancient farming people chose to settle and stay in those areas, and were rewarded with large and consistent crop yields. > > Moving on to OP’s question about the Rhine. If I had to pick a river and ask why large ancient civilizations seem scarce in its vicinity, I’d not pick the Rhine. It’s a relatively small river. Most of it has no floodplain at all, the part that does has a terraced fluvial floodplain, which is basically strips of land of differing elevations. Only the lower strips flood consistently. This is because of the geology of the area, which has rocks of different densities that get differentially eroded by the river. The only major part of the Rhine that has a good-sized floodplain is the Rhine delta. Unfortunately, deltas aren’t as good as floodplains, because soil salinity is high near coasts, which isn’t good for most crops.