Today we took more about ancient Mesopotamia. Here are my notes:
- 200,000 years ago a human species emerged in equatorial Africa
- 14,000 years ago a world wide human race existed
- Earliest prehistoric age is the Paleolithic Age (Old Stone Age)
- Neolithic Age (New stone age) marked by advanced tools
- Populations rose because of surplus of food
- Permanent settlements
- Hierarchies appeared in village life
- Status of women lowered
- Inventions of wheel and plow made it possible to produce enough food for storage
- Villagers were polytheists, worshipping multiple nature, human, and animals
- AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
- Mesopotamia:
- Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris + Euphrates rivers
- Population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques
- Cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants
- Better food storage allowed for diversity in professions: priests, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, and farmers
- Kings emerged and family dynasties
- Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as cuneiform
- A pantheon of Sumerian gods/goddesses emerged
- Worlds first (surviving) epic was the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh"which told of a great flood
- Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds; they also organized a calendar based on moon cycles
- The Ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a "mountain" of earth
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