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Chapter 4 Mesopotamia Lesson 1: The Sumerians
I.
The First Civilizations in Mesopotamia
A. The Two Rivers
1. The first known civilization started in Mesopotamia.
2. A civilization is a group of people who have a high level of culture and order.
3. Mesopotamia is the land located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
4. Mesopotamia is located in Southwest Asia.
5. Mesopotamia was referred to the “fertile crescent” due to its fertile and abundant soil
and because the place where Mesopotamia was located appeared to be shaped like a
crescent.
6. People first stayed in Mesopotamia around 7000 B.C.
7. These people hunted and raised animals for food.
8. People started to farm around 4000 B.C.
9. They farmed in the valley between the two rivers.
B. Irrigation
1. To grow crops, farmers need water for the soil.
2. Farmers in Mesopotamia got water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
3. Sometimes it rained too much causing the rivers to flood.
4. Floods could destroy crops, but they also left the land covered with silt.
5. Silt is a rich soil and good for farming.
6. To control the floods, the people of Mesopotamia built dams.
7. A dam is a wall that stops the flow of water.
8. Mesopotamians also dug canals.
9. A canal is a ditch that lets water flow to the fields. Watering crops using canals is called
irrigation.
10. By using irrigation, farmers could grow large amounts of food. The people of
Mesopotamia had extra food, or a surplus.
C. Cities Grow
1. Because of a surplus of food, not everyone needed to farm.
2. Some people could become artisans. An artisan is a person who makes a good, such
as cloth, tools, or weapons.
3. People began to live together in places that helped them trade goods.
4. Before long, small villages grew into cities. By 3000 B.C., many cities had started and
grown in Sumer. Sumer is the region in southern Mesopotamia.
D. Sumer’s Civilization
1. The people of Sumer were called Sumerians.
2. They built many cities. The cities of Sumer had deserts around them, which were hard
to travel across so each city stood alone.
3. As cities grew, they gained control of the land around them.
4. They formed city-states.
5. Each city-state had its own government. It was not part of a larger nation.
6. Sometimes Sumerian city-states fought each other, but during times of peace, they
traded with each other.
E. Polytheism
1. The Sumerian people worshiped many gods.
2. Worshipping many gods is called polytheism.
3. Each city-state, though, claimed one god as its own.
4. To honor this god, the city-state built a large temple called a ziggurat.
5. A temple is a building used to worship a god or many gods.
F. Social Classes in Sumer
1. People in Sumer were divided into social classes.
2. The upper class included kings, priests, warriors, and government workers. People in
this class were powerful and wealthy.
3. The middle class had farmers, fishers, and artisans. It was the largest group.
4. Enslaved people made up the lowest class. They had no money and no power.
5. The basic unit of Sumerian life was the family.
6. Men were the head of the family. Women ran the home and cared for the children.
G. Sumerian Contributions
1. Sumerians created a way of writing called cuneiform.
2. Cuneiform was written by using wedge-shaped marks cut into damp clay. Only a few
people learned to read and write cuneiform.
3. Some of these people became scribes. A scribe is a person who records business
dealings and important events.
4. The oldest known story in the world comes from Sumer. This story is called the Epic of
Gilgamesh.
5. An epic is a long poem that tells the story of a hero.
6. The Sumerians were the first people to use the wheel. They were also the first to use
sailboats and wooden plows.
7. Sumerians were the first to make bronze out of copper and tin.
8. Sumerians studied mathematics and astronomy. Astronomy is the study of planets,
stars, and other objects in space.
9. Sumerians learned the best times to plant crops by observing the positions of the stars.