Transcript Eubanks World History August 20 Mesopotamiax

Early Societies:
Mesopotamia
Where it all began
AD, BC,CE, BCE, what does it all
mean????
Domestication of Animals
Characteristics of Civilization
1.Surplus of food.
2.Large towns, with some form of government
3.People perform different jobs (Division of Labor)
4.Development of a calendar
5.Form of writing
Nile River
Yangtze River
Indus River
Mesopotamia: The Fertile
Crescent
The Fertile Crescent
• This civilization began
about 5000 BC.
• The area stretched
from the
Mediterranean Sea to
the Persian Gulf.
• This includes the
modern-day countries
of Iran and Iraq.
The Fertile Crescent
• The Fertile Crescent is
sometimes called
Mesopotamia.
• This is the area
between the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers.
The State and Urban Revolution:
In the city-state (or state), kin and tribal
loyalties are, by definition, subordinated and
replaced by political ties…. What makes a citystate different from an agricultural town is the
synergy created by its people interacting with
each other on the basis of political
relationships rather than traditional blood ties.
Sumer, 3200-2350 B.C.
Sumer
• The Sumerians arrived
around 3500 BC.
• By 3000 BC they had
set up 13 city-states.
• They built ziggarats to
bury great kings and
act as centers of
government.
Temple of Sumer
Mesopotamian Religion
Believed in many gods-polytheism
Had gods to explain every aspect of life
Hammaurabi
• Leader of the
Amorites.
• Brought the entire
region under his
control.
• Created a law code
covering the entire
region.
• Each violation was
assigned a specific
punishment.
If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his hand.
Reign of Hammurapi of Babylon,
1792-1750 B.C.
Dams and Canals
• Villages cooperated
together to build dams
and escape channels to
control the seasonal
flooding.
• Later, canals were
built to water fields
away from the river.
Cuneiform
• The Mesopotamian
form of writing.
• Consisted of hundreds
of wedge-shaped
markings.
• Used to produce
business records and
literary works.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
CUNEIFORM: The Sumerian
writing system during the
early periods was constantly
in flux. The original direction
of writing was from top to
bottom, but for reasons
unknown, it changed to left-toright very early on (perhaps
around 3000 BCE). This also
affected the orientation of the
signs by rotating all of them
90° counterclockwise. Another
change in this early system
involved the "style" of the
signs. The early signs were
more "linear" in that the
strokes making up the signs
were lines and curves. But
starting after 3000 BC, these
strokes started to evolve into
wedges, thus changing the
visual style of the signs from
linear to "cuneiform".