Mesopotamia Notes

The Earliest Cities: Mesopotamia
- The district known as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates river
- 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 profession: priest, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, farmers
- Kings emerged, as did family dynasties and the concept of the "city-state"
- Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "cuneiform"
- A pantheon of Sumerian Gods and Goddesses emerged, with many of the deities representing the natural elements of he world
- The world's 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

Civilization in Mesopotamia
- Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticating animals in many areas, especially to the south of Sumer in arabia
- 2350 B.C.: Their gods took the place of previous gods took the place of previous gods and all were forced
- King Hammurabi of Babylon created a series of laws known as “Hammurabi’s Code” - laws that included “an eye for an eye” and regulations of marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes