Download AKS 30 - Mesopotamia - Brookwood High School

•Civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers.
•Mesopotamia was part of the Fertile Crescent:
•An area of land that stretched from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea in what
is now Syria, northern Iraq, and Turkey.
• The process in which
a new idea or product
spreads from one
culture to another
• Mesopotamians
exchanged products
and ideas with
neighboring cultures.
• Abundant supply of
water from the rivers.
• Natural supply of food:
fish, wildfowl, and
dates from the date
palm tree.
• Fertile Soil: used for
both growing crops
and making bricks
and pottery.
• Unpredictable flooding and/or
drought.
– Created irrigation system.
• No natural barriers for
protection.
• Building materials were
scarce.
– Traded their surplus of food with
neighboring cultures for building
supplies.
– For defense, they built thick city
walls with mud bricks.
• At least seven
different groups of
people ruled the
Mesopotamian
Valley.
• Most important were
the Sumerians and
the Babylonians.
Sumerians
• One of the first groups of
people to form a
civilization.
• Sumer was different from
all other earlier
civilizations because of the
following characteristics:
– 1. Advanced cities
– 2. Specialized workers
– 3. Complex institutions
– 4. Record keeping
– 5. Advanced technology
•Organized set of laws.
•Government ruled from a central place, such
as a city, a palace, or a temple.
•Sumerian civilization was organized into 12
separate units called city-states.
•Each city state ruled the city and its
surrounding farmland.
•Each city-state belonged to a god or goddess
that owned the land and controlled the yearly
floods.
•Each city-state built a ziggurat, or temple, to
honor its god or goddess.
•Sumerians believed that the gods and
goddesses controlled everything that happened
in their lives.
•Made of sun-baked
clay.
•Pyramid-shaped.
•Largest building,
usually located in the
center of the city.
•Very powerful.
•They controlled the
land, collected and
stored the crops,
and owned large
herds of sheep and
cattle.
•Powerful role of the king
developed because of
disagreements between citystates.
•The King was the military
leader for the city-states.
•Developed the first system of writing that was more than
just pictures.
•Cuneiform:
•Wedge-shaped cuneiform symbols were made with a
reed, called a stylus, pressed on wet clay tablets.
•The tablets were then baked in the sun or over fire
until they were hard.
•Also wrote about wars, natural disasters, the reign of
kings. . .
•Beginning of written history!!
•Wagon wheel
•Potter’s wheel
(shape containers)
•Number system
•12 month calendar
•Metal plow
•Sail
•Some of the
earliest known
maps
•New architecture
•Invaders took over the Sumerian lands and created new
civilizations, borrowing much from the Sumerians.
•Around 2000 B.C. new invaders established Babylon as
the center of their rule.
•By 1700 B.C. Babylon ruled most of Mesopotamia.
•The Babylonians did not complete destroy the Sumerian
culture, they adopted much of it.
•Babylonian scribes wrote volumes of new texts using the
Sumerian cuneiform. They even recopied Sumerian texts.
•First to use algebra and geometry.
•Society was well organized:
•Came to power in 1792 B.C.
•Wanted to promote justice,
destroy wicked people, and
protect weak people from strong
people.
•Hammurabi had 282 laws written
on clay tablets.
•These laws are called the Code of
Hammurabi and were displayed
throughout Babylon.
•People understood the laws and
what would happen if they failed
to obey the laws.
•Hammurabi was the first ruler to
organize laws into a complete
system.