Download Ancient Civilizations - Lake Travis ISD / Overview

While homo sapiens-humans-have been
around for a couple hundred thousand
years, for most of their history they
were not considered “civilized.”
Humans originally lived in small
groups and gathered nuts and berries
and hunted in order to survive. Many
were nomadic. That is, they moved
from one place to another.
They sometimes moved to follow herds
of animals, or they may have had to
search for of plants, nuts, and berries.
They were hunter/gatherers.
Overpopulation may have diminished
the food supply, or a natural disaster
may have made moving necessary.
Early People
Ancient Civilizations
It was in the river valleys of Southwest Asia and North
Africa that the earliest civilizations began.
The term “Fertile Crescent” referred
to an area in the Middle East where
the soil was fertile and the land was
shaped in a crescent. It was an ideal
place for nomadic people to settle,
build cities, and eventually develop
civilizations.
Mesopotamia was the name of a valley
between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, found in the eastern part of the
Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia is a
Greek word meaning “land between
two rivers.” (The Nile River valley was also
an early center of civilization.)
With the abundance of food found in the
wild area of the Fertile Crescent, people no
longer needed to move around to find food.
They learned to plant their own seeds and
found it was easier to grow crops in the rich
soil and raise animals for food than to hunt
and gather.
They stayed in one place, working together
farming, and so began forming
communities—first tiny settlements, then
villages, then cities.
As agricultural practices improved, the people
were able to grow more crops than they could
eat and raise more animals than they needed,
so they began to trade the excess crops and
animals with others.
As agriculture improved,
trading increased, populations
grew, cities grew…and people
needed to invent ways to deal
with their new way of life.
This shift from hunting and
gathering to farming about
6,000 years ago, is when
civilizations began to develop.
Social, political, legal &
technological developments are all
characteristics of a civilization.
Other characteristics of civilization include:
the invention of writing,
mathematics,
improved agricultural practices,
sophisticated architecture, and
trade/economics.
People talk about Mesopotamia as if it were a
single civilization or culture.
But, Mesopotamia was an area or region—not a civilization.
At any given time, the region of Mesopotamia was composed of several independent city-states, each with its
own religion, laws, language, and government.
Many different civilizations existed in ancient Mesopotamia over time.
Some existed at the same time. For example, a certain culture may have dominated a certain
period, while other cultures existed at the same time, seeking to become independent.
Some cultures that existed in this area are:
Sumerian
Assyrian
Babylonian Canaanite
Philistine
Egyptian
Israelite
Sumerians
The first group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia was the Sumerians.
They originally lived in the mountains but moved to the Fertile
Crescent, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to take advantage of
the fertile soil. The hot, dry climate of Mesopotamia was mixed with
seasonal flooding, which made farming a challenge.
Farmers in ancient Mesopotamia learned to deal with these problems by
developing irrigation systems to water crops during dry spells and
building levees to control the floods. These improvements in farming,
along with the development of the plow, made the new farmers
successful in producing large amounts of grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Irrigation—
shaduf
Levees
Plow
As a result, the Sumerians had a stable food supply
and not everyone was needed to farm, hunt, or fish.
So, some Sumerians became tradesmen, merchants,
soldiers, priests, government officials, and artists.
Their country was called Sumer.
The Sumerians were given credit for
many inventions.
One of the most important was the
invention of a written language.
Writing was invented by the Sumerians to
keep records. Their writing was very simple. It
was composed of pictures called pictographs.
Professional writers, called scribes, used a
wedge-shaped stylus to draw pictures on clay
tablets that, when baked, became permanent
records. Over a period of time, the writing
became more sophisticated. The pictures were
replaced with shapes and lines.
This type of writing is called cuneiform and
became the basis for later writing in
Mesopotamia. It also seems to have influenced
Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Cuneiform: “Wedge Shaped
Writing”
Deciphering Cuneiform
The Sumerians also had a numbering system based on the number 60.
We still use the Sumerian system today when measuring time and in math…
•
•
sixty seconds make a minute
sixty minutes makes an hour
• a circle has 360 degrees
KEYSTONE
The buildings of Sumer were
different from other
civilizations, such as the
Egyptians. Sumerians learned
how to use a keystone to make
arches.
A keystone is a wedge-shaped
stone in an arch that causes
the arch to lock together.
The doorways, gates, and
other openings in the
Sumerian cities had arches.
Similar openings in Egyptian
buildings were square.
Other Sumerian inventions were the wheel
(which was either developed first for transporting heavy items or
making pottery—we’re not sure which came first),
the water
clock, the twelve-month calendar,
and the sailboat.
(Not bad for a first go at civilization!!!)
So, if you use any of these things …
you have the ancient Sumerians
of Mesopotamia to thank!!!!!
Between 3500 and 2000
B.C., the Sumerians were
living in large villages.
Eventually they became
prosperous, and the villages
developed into selfgoverning city-states.
The buildings in these citystates were made of sundried mud bricks.
The Sumerians used these
mud bricks as building
materials because there was
no building stone and very
little timber in Sumer, and
the rivers were a great
source for mud.
Religion was important to the
Sumerians.
At the center of each city-state was a
temple that was surrounded by
courts and public buildings. These
temples were called ziggurats.
Ziggurats were originally built on
platforms, but eventually became
temple-towers brightly decorated
with glazed bricks. They were like
huge pyramids with terraced sides
that were flat on the top.
They must have been pretty
spectacular, shining and gleaming
with color, rising up above the other
low, mud-colored buildings!
Paying tribute at the temple or ziggurat was
an important part of Sumerian culture.
Priest Kings
Sumerians had many gods.
They believed that gods spoke to them through
their priests. Since priests were the representatives
of the gods, they had a great deal of power.
When a priest commanded that something be
done, the people believed the command was
actually coming from one of their gods, and
they obeyed.
The ability to make important decisions and
have the people obey them elevated the status
of priests.
When religious leaders rule, this form of
government is called theocracy.
One Great Disadvantage
While Mesopotamia offered
many advantages for settlement,
such as rich soil, water, and
game, there was
one great disadvantage.
The land did not provide any
natural protection from
invaders. Enemies could easily
march into Sumer from almost
any direction.
This made Sumerians
vulnerable to attack, not only
form foreign armies, but from
other Sumerians cities as well.
Wars between Sumerian cities
were common.
Natural Protection  —or the Lack of It! 
The importance of natural protection
cannot be overstated.
Compare the location of Egypt with
Sumer, for example. A desert on both
sides of the Nile River protects Egypt.
Nations wanting to conquer Egypt
would have a difficult time overcoming
these natural barriers to launch an
attack. Consequently, Egypt’s culture
grew quickly.
Whereas, Sumer, constantly fending off
attacks, grew more modestly.
Akkadians
Another group that moved into
Mesopotamia was the Akkadians, who had
been living on the Arab peninsula.
The Akkadians were a Semitic people,
meaning their language was similar to
Arabic and Hebrew.
The Akkadians formed their own country
where the Tigris and Euphrates River were
close together. Their country was called
Akkad. The Akkadians adopted much of
the Sumerian culture. After many clashes
between the Sumerians and the Akkadians,
more Semites invaded Sumer.
The Akkadian invaders eventually conquered
and absorbed the Sumerian culture. This
combined civilization lasted until about
1950 B.C. when more newcomers captured
Ur.
Mesopotamia’s most important city was Ur.
Phoenicians
The Phoenicians were a legendary
sea-faring and trading people who
lived along the Mediterranean coast.
Their homeland featured mountains
with trees famous in the Near East as
the “Cedars of Lebanon.”
These cedars were used to build the
boats in which the Phoenicians
sailed the Mediterranean and
beyond to trade art, textiles (cloth or
fabric), glassware, precious stones and
perfume .
The result was not only trade but
cultural diffusion—or the spreading
of knowledge and culture through
these ancient trade routes!
The sea also provided the Phoenicians with their most expensive
product, a purple dye that they got from the murex, a type of sea
snail. It was so rare and so expensive that the color purple came to
represent the color of royalty around the world for thousands of years!
A lot of work went into producing the dye, as more than 9,000
mollusks were needed to create just one gram of Tyrian purple.
Phoenician means "of purple merchants."
Since only wealthy rulers could afford to buy
and wear the color, it became associated with
the royalty of Rome, Egypt, and Persia.
Purple also came to represent spirituality and
holiness because the ancient emperors, kings
and queens that wore the color were often
thought of as gods or descendants of the gods.
The status associated with Phoenician purple
continued for centuries. In fact, Queen
Elizabeth I forbade anyone except close
members of the royal family to wear the color!
The Phoenicians became legendary traders who spread Semitic
culture across the Mediterranean, eventually discovering the Atlantic
Ocean, rounding Africa, landing in England and Ireland and building
many cities in Western Europe and on the Atlantic coast of Africa!!!
But it was their intellectual contribution to society that guaranteed their
place in history….
They gave the world the twenty-two "magic
signs" called the alphabet, the basis of our
modern alphabet and numerical figures!!!
Babylon
Sumer was located at the downstream end of Mesopotamia.
Upstream and later in time (2000-1600 BC) was Babylon.
Hammurabi’s Code
Hammurabi was the most famous King of Babylon.
He issued the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive set
of laws—both criminal and civil—that was the first written
laws ever.
This is huge because it established the RULE of LAW —
order in society which we still live under today!
Before this, if someone was wronged, he or his family would
take matters into their own hands and retaliate. Sometimes
the retaliation would be far worse than the original crime—
even death!
So, the Code of Hammurabi put a limit on such actions
and made sure that the punishment could be no worse
than the crime.
This is the "eye for an eye" theory of punishment, which
though pretty barbarian in its application, is basically the
concept of making the punishment fit the crime.
Hammurabi’s Code of Law
In 1790 BC, the king wrote the world’s first collection of laws—282 specific laws.
Legal Principles of Hammurabi
Established the Rule of Law—fairness and justice in that the punishment fit the
crime.
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Old Testament approach comes from this.
First use of the presumption of innocence!
Punishments could also be based upon social class or standing of lawbreaker
If a commoner knocks out the eye of a patrician (higher class) then he shall lose his
eye, too (“an eye for an eye”). But if a surgeon operates on a person’s eye and
causes the person to lose their eye, he will lose his hands.
The Code of Hammurabi even recognized such modern concepts as that of corporate
personality (recognizing corporations as individual entities with rights—right to a name of its
own, the right to own, sell, lease or mortgage property of its own, the right to sue and be
sued, etc.)
Government had a responsibility for what occurred in society.
Typically, invaders take over and absorb the
prior culture and their advancements. The
exception to this is when BARBARIANS
conquer a civilization.
---------------------------About 1600 BC, the Babylonian Empire fell to
nomadic warriors resulting in a regression of
culture.
The resulting Dark Age marks the beginning of the
end of the Ancient Period of History.
Israelites
Near the Phoenicians, along the Jordan
River and the Dead Sea, was a group of
wandering herders named the Israelites—a
Semitic, Hebrew-speaking people of the
ancient Near East.
Their early migrations started in Sumer
and included a period of captivity in
Egypt, but they considered the land of
Palestine their “Promise Land.”
The Israelites were never a great power, but
their kings did build a temple in their capital
city of Jerusalem. This temple became the
focus of their religion, Judaism.
Judaism was the earth’s first monotheistic
religion and the predecessor of
Christianity, Islam, and Modern Judaism.
These earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia have affected world history
tremendously, not only in social, legal, and business areas, but in
religion as well.
Many of the great religions that exist in the world today had their beginnings
in the area known as the Fertile Crescent.
Egyptians
To the west of Mesopotamia was the Sinai
Peninsula, a desert area that guards the entrance
to Egypt. Here, protected, the Egyptian civilization
flourished along the banks of the Nile River.
Being a bit isolated from the rest of the ancient
Near East, Egypt developed its own style and way of
doing things—it’s own culture! For example, its
writing was hieroglyphics, not cuneiform. And, instead
of writing on clay tablets, the Egyptians developed an
early form of paper called papyrus.
Also, the Egyptians built their monuments of stone,
so they have stood for thousands of years. Thus, the
Egyptian civilization with its great cities like Thebes
and Memphis was never entirely lost.
In contrast, the Sumerians, with their clay
monuments and mud brick buildings, were nearly
forgotten. Their ziggurats weathered into mounds
of dust that were nearly forgotten. However,
archaeologists later viewed the mounds as clues
about locations of past civilizations. When
archaeologists dug, they found the baked clay tablets
that recorded what we now know of this civilization.
Then, of course,
the ancient Egyptian culture also had…
The ancient Egyptians believed that when someone died, their soul
left their body. The soul would then return and be reunited with the
body after it was buried. However, the soul needed to be able to find
and recognize the body in order to live forever.
The accomplishments of past civilizations have shaped the
world we know today
These civilizations borrowed from previous cultures, adopting those
elements they liked while rejecting those elements they didn’t.
This process, repeated many times, has given us the world we live
in today.
Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time,
made the point best when he said, “If I have seen further, it is
because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” He was making
the point that every inventor, scientist, philosopher, and artist is
able to build or add to the inventions and accomplishments of
those who have gone before.
Many times these accomplishments can be traced to one person.
Others are traced back to groups of people or to a civilization.