Lesson 1 Civilization Emerges in Mesopotamia Lesson Summary

Lesson 1 Civilization Emerges in Mesopotamia Lesson Summary • The Fertile Crescent is a region of the Middle East. It stretches in a large, crescent-shaped curve from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. • The Fertile Crescent includes Mesopotamia, a wide, flat plain that lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. It was here that world's first civilization began.

How Was Agriculture Important in Mesopotamia? • Thousand of years ago, people called the Sumerians settled in Mesopotamia. This land posed challenges to the Sumerians. The rivers flooded often. The climate was hot and dry in the summer. But the regular floods also left behind rich soil. • The Sumerians were able to grow grains and vegetables. The rivers also provided water. The Sumerians dug many miles of canals to irrigate, or water, their fields. Irrigation helped turn much of Mesopotamia into productive farmland. • The Sumerians also invented tools that enabled them to plow and plant seeds at the same time. In these ways the Sumerians were able to grow lots of food. This allowed the population to grow.

City-States of Sumer • Around 3000 BCE, city-states emerged in Sumer—the land of the Sumerians. A city-state is an independent state that includes a city and its surrounding territory. • The Sumerians developed a social order, a new development for human societies. Sumerian society had three classes, each of which had distinct roles. The upper class included the ruler, top officials, priests and wealthy people. The middle class included farmers and skilled workers. The lowest class was mostly enslaved people.

What Role Did Religion Have in Sumerian Society? • Like most ancient peoples, the Sumerians practiced polytheism, the belief in more than one god. Sumerians believed these gods controlled every aspect of life, including rain, wind, and other elements of nature. • Sumerians felt that they needed to keep the gods happy in order for their cities to grow and prosper. Priests communicated with the gods. Sumerians believed the priests’ connections with the gods brought peace and social order.

What Was the Sumerian Writing System Like? • The need of Sumerian priests to have a system of recordkeeping led to the development of the world’s first system of writing. By 3100 BCE, Sumerian priests had created a new writing system called cuneiform. • Cuneiform is a system of writing that uses triangular-shaped symbols to stand for words, ideas, or sounds. Sumerians later began to use writing for other things, such as literature. One fine example is a long poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was written in cuneiform on 12 clay tablets.

How Did Sumerian Government Work? • The first leaders of Sumerian city-states were priests. But when war broke out among city-states, priests chose military leaders to lead the fight. Sometimes, these military leaders remained in power even after the war ended. In this way, the idea of kingship developed. Sumerian kings and priests worked together. • Kings respected the roles and powers of priests. The priests, in turn, declared that the gods had sent the king to rule. Some Sumerian kings took the important step of collecting laws into a written code. • The earliest known law code was issued around 2100 BCE, by Ur. Nammu, the king of Ur. It included laws about marriage, slavery, and causing harm to other people.

Sumerian Achievements • During this time, there were many improvements in technology. In addition to developing a writing system and farming technologies, the Sumerians invented the wheel and learned to power boats with sails. • They also made advances in mathematics and astronomy. They divided an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, and the year into 12 months of 30 days each. Sumerians were also one of the first civilizations to make bronze, a hard metal that makes strong weapons and tools. • Through trade, many of these Sumerian advances spread to other lands.