What do historians study when attempting to make connections between ancient civilizations and world cultures of today?

birth rates

nuclear families

death rates

cultural hearths

cultural hearths

Historians, antropologists, archeologists among others, study ancient cultures were major civilizations originated, in doing so they:

Identify the "hearth" the core, from which a culture was born and the influence that it expanded to the rest of the world.

Among the most prominent cultural hearths of the ancient world we can refer to:

 the Nile Valley of Egypt,

   Mesopotamia of West Asia

   the Indus River and Ganges River Valleys of India,

   the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers of China

In all of the above cases, a large population rose as a result of favorable conditions for living: the presence of significant water bodies, soil conditions in a friendly landscape that later became the cultural hearth for Egyptian Empire, Babilonia, India, and Chinese civilizations respectively.

The mentioned areas continue to flourish , and thus their economic and social influence remains today important in the world and is traced back then.