Download File - Dameron`s World History

Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
The Fertile Crescent
The First Civilization
 Mesopotamia means “land
between the rivers”
 Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
 Annual flooding
• Silt – rich layer of soil deposited by
a river
• Farming was the main profession
because of the Conditions
The People of Mesopotamia
Sumerians 3300 B.C (Sumer)
Three Environmental Challenges of
Mesopotamia
1. Unpredictable flooding/rain
• Sometimes no rain for months, other
times it is flooding
2. No natural Barriers for protection
• Mesopotamia is one big flat open
plain. People invade from all around
3. Limited Natural resources
• Lots of food, no wood or building
materials
The People of Mesopotamia
Solving Environmental Problems
1. To provide water, they dug
irrigation ditches that brought
water from the rivers
2. To protect themselves they
built giant walls made of mud
bricks
3. Sumerians traded their
abundant resources for ones
they didn’t have
Development of City-States
City-state: City and
surrounding area
functioning as a country
does today.
Priests head
government 3000 BCE
Kings head government
2500 BCE
• Create Dynasties
 Series of rulers under one
family
Overview of Ur (city-state)
Society
• Social Hierarchy
• Kings, ruling family and Priests
• Merchants, scribes, lesser priests
• Peasant farmers
• Who is at the bottom?
• Slaves
• Captured in war
• Sold self into slavery to pay off debts
• **Role of Women?
Religion
• Polytheistic
• Goddesses
• Afterlife
• Pessimistic
Ziggurat
Advancements
• Inventions: wheel, sail, and plow
• 1st to use bronze
• Developments in math
• Architectural innovations
• arches, columns
• CUNEIFORM
• Writing system
• Pictograph – symbols stand for words
• Ziggurats (temples)
Deciphering Cuneiform
TRADE
• Sumerians traded in the desert
• Why do we trade?
• https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=w-6HOQiuIgE
• Get things we don’t have (wood, etc.)
• Mesopotamian trade stretched from the Indus Valley to the Nile
• Sumerian culture followed with trade (grew with it)
Mesopotamia under Sumerians
• CONSTANT CONFLICT
• Result: Mesopotamia vulnerable to attacks
• Sargon of Akkad
• Unified Mesopotamia = world’s first empire.
• Dynasty lasted about 200 years.
• Akkadian Empire spread Sumerian culture from Mesopotamia to
Egypt (Fertile Crescent)
Hammurabi
• Created a WRITTEN code of laws to help unify the diverse
population
• Peak of empire was during the reign of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
• Laws of the empire
• Punishments enforced as well
• Punishment’s varied on social rank (commoners, slaves treated harsher
than nobles)
• MAIN IDEA OF CODE: Reinforced the belief that government
had a responsibility for what occurred in society
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM
Read a few of Hammurabi’s laws, what conclusions
might you be able to draw about life in Babylon
1.
If a man knocks the teeth out of another man, his own teeth will be knocked out.
2.
If anyone strikes the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty
blows with an ox-whip in public.
3.
If a freeborn man strikes the body of another freeborn man of equal rank, he shall
pay one gold mina [an amount of money].
4.
If the slave of a freed man strikes the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.
5.
If anyone commits a robbery and is caught, he shall be put to death.
6.
If anyone opens his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water floods
his neighbor's field, he shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss.
7.
If a judge tries a case, reaches a decision, and presents his judgment in writing;
and later it is discovered that his decision was in error, and it was his own fault,
he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case and be removed from the
judge's bench.
8.
If during an unsuccessful operation a patient dies, the arm of the surgeon must be
cut off.
9.
If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.
10.
If anyone steals the minor son of another, he shall be put to death.
11.
If a man takes a woman to wife, but has no intercourse with her, this woman is no
wife to him.
12.
If a man strikes a pregnant woman, thereby causing her to miscarry and die, the
assailant's daughter shall be put to death.
13.
If a man puts out the eye of an equal, his eye shall be put out.