Download Chapter 4 Mesopotamia Lesson 1: The Sumerians The First

Chapter 4 Mesopotamia Lesson 1: The Sumerians
I.
The First Civilizations in Mesopotamia
A. The Two Rivers
1. The first known ________________ started in ________________.
2. A civilization is a group of people who have a high level of_____________ and
_____________.
3. Mesopotamia is the land located between the _________and ____________Rivers.
4. Mesopotamia is located in _______________________.
5. People first stayed in Mesopotamia around __________B.C.
6. These people _____________and raised ______________ for food.
7. People started to __________around 4000 B.C.
8. They farmed in the valley between the _____________________.
B. Irrigation
1. To grow crops, farmers need water for the soil.
2. Farmers in Mesopotamia got ___________ from the
_______________________________.
3. Sometimes it rained too much causing the rivers to ______________.
4. Floods could destroy_________, but they also left the land covered with _______.
5. Silt is a _______________ and good for farming.
6. To control the floods, the people of Mesopotamia built ____________.
7. A dam is a ________that _________ the flow of water.
8. Mesopotamians also dug ____________.
9. A canal is a _________ that lets water _________ to the fields. Watering crops using
canals is called _____________.
10. By using _____________, farmers could grow large amounts of food. The people of
Mesopotamia had extra food, or a _______________.
C. Cities Grow
1. Because of a _____________of food, not everyone needed to farm.
2. Some people could become _______________. An artisan is a person who
___________________, such as cloth, tools, or weapons.
3. People began to live together in places that helped them ____________ goods.
4. Before long, small villages grew into ____________. By 3000 B.C., many cities had
started and grown in __________. Sumer is the region in
________________ Mesopotamia.
D. Sumer’s Civilization
1. The people of Sumer were called _______________.
2. They built many ______________. The cities of Sumer had ____________ around
them, which were hard to travel across so each city stood ____________.
3. As cities grew, they gained _____________ of the ____________around them.
4. They formed __________________.
5. Each city-state had its own __________________. It was not part of a larger nation.
6. Sometimes Sumerian city-states ____________ each other, but during times of peace,
they ____________with each other.
E. Polytheism
1. The Sumerian people worshiped many ___________.
2. Worshipping many gods is called _________________.
3. Each _____________ though, claimed one god as its own.
4. To honor this god, the city-state built a large temple called a ______________.
5. A __________is a building used to worship _________ or ________________.
F. Social Classes in Sumer
1. People in Sumer were divided into ____________________.
2. The __________ ____________ included ____________, ___________,
_____________ and __________________workers. People in this class
were______________ and ______________.
3. The ____________ ___________ had _________________, ___________, and
____________. It was the _______________ group.
4. ____________people made up the ________________. They had______ money and
no power.
5. The basic unit of Sumerian life was the ___________.
6. _____ were the ________ of the family.__________ ran the __________ and cared for
the _____________.
G. Sumerian Contributions
1. Sumerians created a way of writing called ________________.
2. Cuneiform was written by using ____________________ cut into damp _________.
Only a few people learned to read and write cuneiform.
3. Some of these people became ____________. A scribe is a person who __________
business dealings and important events.
4. The oldest known story in the world comes from Sumer. This story is called the
____________ ____ __________.
5. An ________ is a long poem that tells the story of a hero.
6. The Sumerians were the first people to use the ___________. They were also the first
to use ____________and ________________________.
7. Sumerians were the first to make ____________ out of copper and tin.
8. Sumerians studied _________________and ________________. Astronomy is the
study of planets, stars, and other objects in space.
9. Sumerians learned the best times to plant _________ by observing the positions of the
__________.