Download - Ancient Mesopotamia & the Fertile Crescent
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.