Download Unit 2 River Valley Civilizations Mesopotamia

Unit 2 River Valley Civilizations
Mesopotamia
Chapter 2 Section 1
Geography of the Fertile Crescent
A Desert climate dominates the
landscape between the Persian Gulf and
the Mediterranean Sea in South East Asia.
 The Best land in the desert region is a
curved region known as the Fertile
Crescent

Geography of the Fertile Crescent

Fertile Plains
◦ In the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flow
southeastward to the Persian Gulf
◦ Mesopotamia (which is Greek for “land
between the rivers”) is a plain between the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
◦ The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flood once a
year leaving behind a thick bed of mud called
silt. Silt is a rich, new soil. It is a very
fertile region.
Geography of the Fertile Crescent

Environmental Challenges
◦ People began settling in southern
Mesopotamia before 4500 B.C.
◦ The Sumerians arrived in Mesopotamia
around 3500 B.C. They mixed with local
farmers and the Sumerian language became
dominant.
◦ The good soil of the flat, swampy land of
Sumer attracted settlers.
Geography of the Fertile Crescent
◦ Three disadvantages of the land:
 Flooding of the rivers was unpredictable.
 Small region about the size of Massachusetts and
it lacked natural barriers for protection
 Limited resources of stone, wood, and metal
Geography of the Fertile Crescent

Creating Solutions
◦ To solve the problem of water
 They dug irrigation ditches that carried river
water to their fields
 The irrigation ditches allowed them to have a
surplus of crops.
 These irrigation systems required planning and
supervision. They also established laws to decide
how the water would be distributed.
Geography of the Fertile Crescent
◦ To provide protection to solve the problem of
no natural boundaries
 They built city walls made of mud bricks
 Below you will find how to make mud bricks
Step 1: Combine mud, sand, and straw
Step 2: Build a mold for the bricks
Step 3: Form and press the brick
Step 4: Let the brick dry until it is
complete
Geography of the Fertile Crescent
◦ To solve the problem of limited resources the
Sumerians became traders.
 The Sumerians traded grain, cloth, and crafted
tools for stone, wood, and metal
◦ In order to solve their problems the
Sumerians had to work together. It required
them to organize, cooperate, and have
leadership. The need for leadership started
their organized government
Sumerians Create City-States


A city-state: A city and its surrounding
lands functioning as an independent
political unit (much like a country)
Sumer was one of the first civilizations. Five
key characteristics set Sumer apart from
earlier societies. Those five characteristics
were:
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1. Advanced Cities
2. Specialized Workers
3. Complex Institutions
4. Record keeping
5. Advanced technology
Sumerians Create City-States
Other civilizations looked to Sumer for
inspiration
 The cities in Sumer shared a similar culture
but had their own governments.
 Major Cities in Sumer:

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1. Uruk
2. Kish
3. Lagash
4. Umma
5. Ur
Sumerians Create City-States

The Power of the Priest
◦ At the center of all cities in Ur were the walled
Ziggurats. The priest would appeal to the gods
for the well-being of the city at the Ziggurat.
◦ Sumer’s earliest governments were controlled by
the temple priest.
◦ The farmers believe that the success of their
crops depended upon the blessing of the gods.
◦ The priest acted as an intermediary (or go
between) between the people and the gods.
Sumerians Create City-States

The ziggurat was also like a city hall
because the priests managed the
irrigation system and also demanded a
portion of every farmer’s crops as
taxes.

Monarchs Take Control
◦ In time of war, however, the priests did not
lead the city. Instead, the men of the city
chose a tough fighter who could command
the city’s soldiers.
◦ In the beginning the fighter would only
control the city during times of war and
then gave back power to the priests.
◦ Around 3000 B.C. wars between cities
became more and more frequent and
therefore power gradually shifted away
from the priests and gave power to the
commander of the armies.
◦ In time, some military leaders became fulltime rulers, or monarchs. These rulers
passed down their power to their sons who
passed it down to their heirs. Such as series
of rulers is called dynasty
◦ Between 3000 and 2500 BC many Sumerian
city-states came under the rule of dynasties.

The Spread of Cities
◦ Sumer’s city-states grew prosperous from the
surplus food produced on their farms.
◦ The Sumerians traded the surplus over long
distances. They traded the things they could
make for the things they needed.
◦ As their population and trade grew their
influence on other cultures grew as well.
By 2500 B.C. new cities were arising all over
the Fertile Crescent, in what is now Syria,
northern Iraq, and Turkey.
◦ The Sumerians began absorbing ideas from
the cultures around them. The process of
new ideas or a product spreading from one
culture to another is called cultural diffusion.

A Religion of Many Gods
◦ The Sumerians, like the other societies in the
Fertile Crescent, believed in many different
gods that controlled the forces of
nature.
◦ The belief in many gods is called polytheism.
◦ Enlil, the god of clouds and air, was among
the most powerful gods. Sumerians feared
him as “the raging flood that has no
rival.”
◦ The lowest of all the gods were demons
known as Wicked Udugs, who caused disease,
misfortune, and every kind of human
trouble.
◦ The Sumerians believed in about 3,000 gods
◦ The Sumerians gave their gods human traits
such as falling in love, having children,
quarreling, and so on.
◦ They saw their gods as immortal and allpowerful and that humans were nothing but
their servants.
◦ They believed their gods sent disaster if
they were angry
◦ The Sumerians build ziggurats for them and
made sacrifices of animals, food, and wine
to keep them happy.
◦ Sumerians worked hard to please their gods
while they were alive in order to gain
protection in this life.
◦ Sumerians viewed after life negatively. They
believed you received very little help from
the gods after death. The Sumerians believed
that the souls of the dead went to the “land
of no return” which was a dismal, gloomy
place between the earth’s crust and the
ancient sea. There was no joy in the afterlife. A Sumerian poem describes the afterlife
as “Dust is their fare and clay their food.”

The long Mesopotamian poem, the Epic
of Gilgamesh, gives a glimpse in the
beliefs and concerns of the Ancient
Sumerians. In the poem Gilgamesh, a
legendary king, has an unsuccessful
quest for immortality. Many other
later cultures would be influenced by
Sumerian beliefs found in the Epic of
Gilgamesh.

Life in Sumerian Society
◦ Social classes began to emerge
◦ The highest level of Sumerian Society
was made up of priest and kings.
◦ The next highest level of Sumerian Society
was made up of the wealthy merchants
◦ Below the merchants were the people who
worked with their hands in the fields and
workshops. This level of society made up the
majority of Sumerians
◦ The lowest class of Sumerian society was the
slaves. Slaves were usually captured
foreigners or people who had been sold into
slavery as children in order to pay off their
parent’s debt.
◦ Slaves in Sumerian society could obtain
freedom if they worked hard and paid off
their debt
◦ Social class affects the lives of both men and
women in Sumerian society.
◦ Women in Sumerian society
 Sumerian women could pursue most occupations
in city life (ex merchant, farmer, artisan, etc)
 Women could hold property in their own name
 The could join the lower ranks of the priesthood
 Women were very rarely scribes and therefore
scholars have concluded that girls were not allowed
to attend the school where upper-class boys
learned to read and write.
 Sumerian women had more rights than in many
later civilizations

Sumerian Science and Technology
◦ Sumerians invented the wheel, the sail, and
the plow
◦ First to use bronze (the combination of tin
and copper)
◦ Developed cuneiform. The scribes were
the educated part of society and recorded
important events and laws in cuneiform.
Cuneiform was also used to record scientific
research and advancements in mathematics.
◦ Scientific investigations into astronomy,
chemical substances, and symptoms of
disease.
◦ They developed arithmetic and geometry
in order to help them build city walls and
buildings, irrigations systems, and survey
flooded fields.
◦ They developed a math system in base 60,
from which stem the modern units of
measuring time (60 seconds = 1 minute) and
the circle (360 degrees around).
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Architectural innovations include the
ziggurat which included arches, columns,
ramps, and the pyramid-shaped design
The First Empire Builders

. From 3000 – 2000 B.C. the city-states
of Sumer were almost constantly at war
with each other. This lead to weakening
in the city-states. Because they were so
weak they could no longer ward off
attacks from the people of the
surrounding deserts and hills. Although
the Sumerians never recovered from the
attacks on their cities, their civilizations
did not die.

Sargon of Akkad
◦ In about 2350 B.C. a conqueror known as
Sargon defeated the city-states of Sumer.
Sargon led his army from Akkad, a city-state
north of Sumer
◦ The Akkadians were Semitic people (that is,
they spoke a language that was related to
Arabic and Hebrew).
◦ The Akkadians had long before adopted much
of the Sumerian culture.
◦ Sargon’s conquests helped spread the
Sumerian culture beyond the Tigris and
Euphrates.
◦ By taking control of the northern southern
parts of Mesopotamia Sargon created the first
empire.
◦ An empire brings together several peoples,
nations, or previously independent states
under the control of one ruler.
◦ At its height the Akkadian Empire extended
from the Mediterranean Coast in the west
to present day Iran in the east.
◦ The empire lasted about 200 years and
declined due to internal fighting, invasions, and
famine.

Babylonian Empire
◦ In about 2000 B.C., nomadic warriors known as
Amorites, another Semitic group, invaded
Mesopotamia.
◦ Within a short time, the Amorites overwhelmed
the Sumerians and established their capital at
Babylon, on the Euphrates River.
◦ The Babylonian Empire reached it’s peak under
Hammurabi, from 1792 to 1750 B.C.
Hammurabi’s most enduring legacy is the code
of laws he put together.

Hammurabi’s Code
◦ Hammurabi recognized that a single, uniform
code would help to unify the diverse groups
within his empire. He therefore collected the
existing rule, judgments, and laws into the
Code of Hammurabi
◦ The code listed 282 specific laws that dealt
with everything that affected the community,
including family relations, business conduct,
and crime.
◦ It was a law based on retaliation basically
“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”
◦ Despite being severe, Hammurabi’s code
reflected the idea that the principle that
government is responsible for the
community.