Download Mesopotamia

Compare and Contrast the influence of the natural environments of Early
Mesopotamia and Egypt on the development of their unique societies.
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Mesopotamia
Self-governing, urban center
and agricultural lands it
controls (D.Shute)
Domestication of plants and
animals around 8000 BCE
Agriculture begins ~ 5000BCE
Irrigation required for dry
farming
Ox-drawn plows ~ 4000 BCE
At the mercy of their gods
Creation myth based on a
cosmic battle – mankind
created from the blood of a
defeated god.
Villages – farmers > city state
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Most specialized in crafts,
potter, artwork, and forging
weapons, tools, and other
objects out of metal. (Jordan,
Dalia)
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
were unpredictable in nature.
Mesopotamia = “land between
the rivers”
Silt deposited by river floods =
fertility
Floods from melting snow in N.
mountains > ruined crops in
spring.
Egypt
Bureaucrats kept track of land,
labor, products, and people.
Egypt’s wealth derived to a higher
degree from cultivating the
land.(Stephanie,Tiffany)
Divine Kingship (R. Sullivan)
were ruled by a pharaoh; believed
to be a God
many natural resources useful for
trading
Wheat, barley, & cattle.(Sandra,
Sara, Jessica)
diff. gods for diff. aspects of nature
believed in a good afterlife.
preserved bodies, thought they
would be needed in the afterlife,
mummies. (Chelsea l, Javier)
sent things up and down the Nile
river to communicate with others
hieroglyphics for writing
system(damaris)
hieroglyphics/
papyrus(sara,Sandra,Jessica)
built statues and pyramids for
pharaohs and gods
near Nile river by middle east
intersection of Asia and Africa.
Isolated land by surrounding
barriers of desert and haborless
marshy seacoast.(Stephanie,
Arazely)