Ancient Mesopotamia& the Fertile Crescent

Introduction

• Mesopotamia, in Southwest Asia, was one of the earliest known human civilizations.

• Historians use the term civilization to describe a culture that has reached a certain level of development.

• These cultures used systems of writing, built cities, and assigned workers to specific jobs, such as farmers, blacksmiths, builders, and priests.

Geography of Ancient Mesopotamia

• Mesopotamia lay between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now Syria and Iraq.

• Mesopotamia means “between the rivers”.

• This area of rich farmland was the site of the first permanent human settlement.

Geography of Ancient Mesopotamia

• The region is often called the Fertile Crescent.• The era of Mesopotamia is known as

the Bronze Age because they made wide use of the metal bronze, which is a combination of copper and tin.

Farming in Ancient Mesopotamia

• The area of Mesopotamia was settled around 4500 B.C.

• Wandering peoples who hunted animals and gathered plants for food settled in large numbers along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

• Then people saw rich, fertile soil left by the waters from the yearly floods and knew it would be a productive area to farm.

Farming in Ancient Mesopotamia

• Over the next 500 years, the settlers built an irrigation system to control the flooding of the rivers and to better water the land.

• They created a 12-month calendar based on the phases of the moon to better predict the floods.

• They grew grain and wheat for the first time.

Government in Ancient Mesopotamia

• Some of the villages and towns grew into cities of up to 40,000 people.

• The city-state of this time was made up of the city and farmland around it.

• The city-state was a theocracy - it was ruled by an individual who was both the religious leader and the king.

Sumer

• The earliest of the city-states was Sumer, located near the Persian Gulf.

• The Sumerians created a form of writing known as cuneiform.

• It was written with wooden triangular-shaped sticks on moist clay tablets.

• This system of writing includes hundreds of wedge-shaped forms.

Akkad and Babylon

• Around 2300 B.C., Akkad conquered Sumer and several other city-states to create the first empire, which is a group of states under one ruler.

• Babylon took over the empire around 1800 B.C.

• Babylon’s greatest king was Hammurabi who wrote a set of laws in an attempt to create justice and fairness.

Akkad and Babylon

• The set of laws known as Hammurabi’s Code helped people know the laws and the punishments for breaking the laws.

• The Babylonians developed a number system based on 60.

• Our 60-minute hour, 60-second minute, and 360-degree circle came from this Babylonian system.

The Phoenicians

• The Phoenicians were important traders of the time.

• They lived in what today is Lebanon. • The Phoenicians traveled far and used

the sun and stars to navigate. • They developed an alphabet that grew

into the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets that are still in use today.