The Great World of Mesopotamia

Leader: Jaclyn BellamyTimekeeper: Katie M.

Webmaster: Kristy GessmanSpeaker: Lucas Smith

Environmentalist: Samantha Suarez

Cities and Strong Leaders

C. 3500 BC some villages developed into cities such as Ur, Eridu, Lagash, Kish, and Babylon. Each home to thousands of people and these cities were part of southern Mesopotamia. The area is also called Sumer. Each of these cities had its own strong ruler and each ruler had a different type of control over the land around its city.

In times of war they selected a lugal or “Big Man” to lead them.

These lugal’s then became what was the kings of their cities after seeing that power could get them many things and also because their cities needed a strong leader to guide them and lead them through many hard sitiuations.

Trade Routes and Agriculture

Since the cities of Mesopotamia were located between two rivers they had very fair soils and drainage systems. They controlled the waters by building dams and had the use aqueducts. Early settlers of Mesopotamia used wooden plows to till the Earth before they planted seeds. And they consisted of barley, onions, grapes, turnips, and apples. (yummy!)

Since Mesopotamia didn’t have very many resources they needed trade in order to use them with their own resources. They traded their grain, oils, and textiles to a foreign country in exchange for timber, wine, precious metals and stones.

The merchants who took these long trading trips also needed a way to transport them. For grains are big and bulky a boat was more suitable to transport it whereas precious metals and stones could be transported by foot or donkeys’s.

Skilled Workers and Huge Architecture

Since there were was plenty of food being produced other people could focus on being scribes, builders, metal workers, and priests or priestesses.

Mesopotamia was also one of the famous places with huge architecture. The palaces of elites were large scaled complexes, and were very lavishly decorated.

One of these huge architecture examples would be the Giparu (Gig-Par-Kuin Sumerian) at Ur where the Moon god Nanna’s priestesses resided was a major complex, with multiple court yards, a number of sanctuaries, burial chambers for their dead, and a ceremonial banquet hall.

Social Classes and Writing Systems

Social classes only had three different classes altogether. The top being the kings, nobles, and rulers. Second level was teachers, labors, merchants, etc. Last level being slaves, and prisoners.

Mesopotamians also had a writing system as well. Their writing form was called cuneiform.

Mesopotamians wrote cuneiform on small clay objects which they called clay tokens which they used for goods. counting agricultural and manufactured