•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 city-states.

•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!!

•WagonWagon wheel wheel•Potter’s wheel Potter’s wheel (shape containers)(shape containers)•NumberNumber system system•12 month 12 month calendarcalendar•Metal plowMetal plow•SailSail•Some of the Some of the earliest known earliest known mapsmaps•New New architecturearchitecture

•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.