Farming the Field
Limited Natural Resources
Because of flooding and the hot weather, Mesopotamia lacked natural resources such as stone, wood and metal.
Who Rules
The Sumerian world is split into several large city-states which had control over the surrounding area, acting independently like countries today.
Religion
The Sumerians were polytheistic, believing in many gods. Each of their gods had power over a different force of nature or parts of their lives.
Protection
Religion
Literature
Architecture
Inventions
Fertile Crescent is located on an arc of rich land in Southwest Asia. This becomes a civilization known as Mesopotamia - Sumerians
Located between the Tigris and euphrates
Goal: The area floods int he spring, leaving behind a rich mud called silt. Makes it easy to grow wheat and barley.
Problems:
Floods were not regular
Solution:
Construct irrigation systems
to carry river water to fields.
The Sumerians were lacking natural barriers which acted as protection.
Problem:
With no natural barriers the villagers could not protect themselves from other civilizations, animals and natural disasters.
Solution:
People build walls of baked mud around their villages as a form of defense.
Problem:
With such a limited amount of natural resources, how would the Sumerians get the materials for tools and buildings?
Solution:
Trade!! - Because the Sumerians could always grow more food than was needed, they traded the extra for stone, metal and wood from other lands.
Problem:
Who would rule these Sumerian City-States?
Solution:
Military leaders begin to gain power and permanent control of standing army's. They rise to power in the city-state and then their children after them, establishing dynasties.
Role of People - Servants of God
Problem:
How to please the gods?
Solution:
Build ziggurats and offer sacrificed animals as well as food and wine to the gods.
Believed the souls of the dead went to a joyless place under the earth's crust.
These views and ideas spread, through cultural diffusion, to other areas, helping shape ideas and thought in other civilizations.
''Land of No Return''
The Sumerians wrote their myths and beliefs with the use of epics and poems.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Sumerians used different structures and achievements which impacted their civilization.
Examples: Arches, columns, ramps, pyramid shaped design of the Ziggurat.
The Sumerians develop new technologies and inventions which make life and survival easier
The sail, wheel and the plow
First to use bronze
Developed writing systems on clay tablets
They also developed arithmetic and geometry
