Download The Sumerians

From Village Community
…to City-State
•Transition to settled
communities began about
10,000 B.C.E.
•Why change?
•Villages promoted
agricultural productivity
as well as cultural
creativity
• First villages appeared in
“Fertile Crescent”
• Based on domestication of
plants and animals (peas,
lentils and goats)
• Different regions of world
focused on other species
• Era of villages labeled
Neolithic or New Stone Age
• Tools needed for
cutting, grinding,
chopping, etc.
• Pottery developed for
storage
• Variation of pottery design
and decoration is one way
to identify the people who
occupied early villages
The Fertile
Crescent
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers
gave life to the first known
agricultural villages, about 10,000
years ago, and the first known
cities in human history, about
5000 years ago.
The Fertile Crescent
• Parts of Israel,
Jordan,
Lebanon, Turkey,
Syria, and Iraq
• Eastern part
was called
Mesopotamia
• Flooded often
Tigris
&
Euphrates
• Caused
Rivers
destruction –
swept away
villages & fields
• Mesopotamians
cooperated to
control
floodwaters –
built dams,
escape
channels,
• Easy to invade – led to
canals, &
constant war
ditches
The First Cities
• Appeared on sites of early
villages
• Mesopotamia site of earliest city
• Appeared in seven separate
places around the world
Cities transformed human life with
innovations
• New transportation modes (wheel)
• Metallurgy (led to era known as the
Bronze Age)
• New ideas for administering daily life
(bureaucracy)
• Armies and diplomats
• In short: specialized organizations,
centralized state, and a powerful army
Traits of a Civilization to
accompany that rise of city-states
• Specialization of labor (from surplus
of food)
• Record keeping with a written
language
• Complex institutions – government,
social hierarchy, religion
• Trade & technology
• Advanced cities
Mesopotamia:
The
Sumerians
Indo-European Migration
Sumerian Civilization
• Settled in the lower part of Fertile
Crescent – a.k.a. Sumer
• Birthplace of cities
• Created 12 city-states
• Including Ur, Uruk, & Eridu
• Science: astronomy, calendar
(aided agriculture)
Sumerian City-States
• Sumer region
included 500,000
people, with
eighty percent
living in cities by
2500 B.C.E
• Shared a
common culture
• Built ziggurats for religious
purposes – dedicated to chief deity
of the city
• Religious leaders strongly
supported city leaders viceversa
• Priests built imposing
temples--ziggurats--to
reflect their power and
impress the population
• Rituals reaffirmed power
with public ceremonies
Sumerian
Culture
• Practiced polytheism
• Had one chief god for each
city-state
• Gods were unpredictable,
angry, & selfish
Sumerian Government
• Competition for land
and water rights with
foreign invaders led
to the development of
a monarchy (king)
• King was a religious
& political leader
• King enforced law
and set penalties
(usually a fine)
Sumerian Culture
• Men – could sell
wife and children to
pay a debt; could
divorce easily
• Women – could buy
and sell property;
operate own
businesses; own
slaves
Writing!
• Developed pictograms, then
cuneiform – 1st known writing
system in the world
• Epic poem –
Gilgamesh story
of a godlike man
who performs
heroic deeds
1st used for record keeping,
Sumerians were soon producing
literature and government
decrees!
Invention/technology
• Invented wagon
wheel, arch,
potter’s wheel
• Developed a
number system
based on 10,60, &
360 (for degrees in
circles) and 12
month lunar
calendar
• Silver coinage
• etc
• Sargon I –
built the
Akkadian
Empire by
uniting all of
the
Mesopotamian
city-states
(predated
Egypt)
• …and..
Famous Leaders
The Code of
Hammurabi
• Hammurabi –
created a
code of law
• Dealt with
most aspects
of daily life
• Penalized
wrongdoers
with an “eye
for an eye,
and a tooth
for a tooth”
approach
The Code of
Hammurabi
• Protected
the less
powerful &
property
• Laws varied
according to
class
The First Cities: What
Difference Do They Make?
• Cities facilitated important
accomplishments including
population increase, economic
growth, organized life, new
technologies, legal codes, and
literature
• Not all cities succeeded
• Cities raised new questions of
appropriate size and how best to
achieve the good life