GEC STS

• Sumerian civilization


  Flourished between 4100-1750 BCE in southern Mesopotamia, never a cohesive political entity but a region of city-states
• Ancient Sumer civilization


  4500 BCE - 1900 BCE
• Ancient Sumer lasted from the late Neolithic period to the early Bronze Age
• The Sumerian civilization thrived for roughly 2600 years
• Ancient Sumerians flourished between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what today is southern Iraq, in what the Greeks later called Mesopotamia (land between rivers)
• Sumerians


  • Invented new technologies and perfected the large-scale use of existing ones
  • Transformed how humans cultivated food, built dwellings, communicated and kept track of information and time
  • Pioneers in agriculture, craft (e.g., metalwork and pottery) and trade
• Indicators that prove Sumer is a great civilization

  • Technology
  • Government
  • Stable food supplies
• City rulers began fighting with each other

  Civilization weakened
• Geographical proximity to nearby competing city-states

  Played a significant role in the decline of the Sumerians
• Sumerian civilization collapsed with the invasion of the region by the Elamites


  1750 BCE
• Severe drought occurred in the 22nd century


  Crippled Sumerian society from within
• Uncontrolled water supply


  Flooding from rivers carried harmful salts and mineral matter, making the soil more acidic and crops started to die
• Sumer lost its economic strength


  Led to a loss of political and military strength, making them too weak to fight off invaders
• Mass-produced pottery


  Clay pot making, Sumerians developed the turning wheel to mass-produce it
• Cuneiform writing


  First developed around 3500 BCE to ensure accurate communication during long-distance trade, evolved from pictographs to symbols representing words and sounds
• Sexagesimal number system


  First time a civilization used a decimal or place value-based number system, with powers of 60
• Sumerian doctors

  Asu practiced therapeutic medicine, asipu practiced religious medicine and treated patients through religious prescriptions
• Sumerian agriculture


  • Flat, mostly treeless land with fertile soil between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
  • Used artificial irrigation systems with canals, reservoirs, and water lifts
  • Invented the plow around 3000 BCE
• Hydraulic engineering


  Sumerians designed complex systems of canals, dams, and gates to regulate the flow of water from the rivers
• Chariot


  Sumerians developed the first two-wheeled chariot, probably used for ceremonies or military purposes
• Plow


  Sumerians invented the plow, a vital technology in farming, and produced manuals on how to use various types of plows
• Mass-produced bricks


  Sumerians created molds for making bricks out of clay, allowing them to build more and larger structures
• Metallurgy


  Sumerians were among the earliest to use copper to make useful items and art
• Mesopotamian sail boat


  Simple wooden boats that would carry people and goods downstream and then back upstream
• Babylonian civilization


  Influential city that served as a center of Mesopotamian civilization for nearly two millennia, from roughly 2000 B.C. to 540 B.C.

  
• Babylon had a significant impact on Mesopotamia, including the development of a harsh system of laws and the use of the Babylonian language as a way of communicating across borders
• Ancient Babylonian scientists made important discoveries in mathematics, physics and astronomy, including the development of trigonometry, methods for tracking Jupiter, and ways of tracking time that are still used today

  
• Code of Hammurabi


  Well known for its "eye for an eye" style of lawmaking, but also set out the nature of the relationship among Hammurabi, the gods and the people he ruled
• Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. It was followed by a transitional period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BCE.

  
• From inventing our modern calendar to inventing writing and creating surgical instruments similar to those used today, the ancient Egyptians were truly masters of invention.
• In antiquity, ancient civilizations arose around the Nile River in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, the Indus River in India, and the Yellow River in China.
• While later civilizations, such as the Greeks, could learn from them, these ancient civilizations had to invent everything for themselves.
• The ancient Egyptians would come to invent

  • mathematics
  • geometry
  • surveying
  • metallurgy
  • astronomy
  • accounting
  • writing
  • paper
  • medicine
  • the ramp
  • the lever
  • the plow
  • mills for grinding grain
• Bronze


  Harder and more durable than other metals of that time, and this archeological period became known as the Bronze Age
• Hieroglyphics


  The earliest form of Egyptian writing, which combined logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements and had some 1,000 distinct characters
• Later, hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphics, as were the Greek and Aramaic scripts. This makes Egyptian hieroglyphics the ancestor of most scripts in use today.
• Papyrus


  The ancient Egyptians turned the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant, which is found throughout the Mediterranean region, into sheets that could be rolled into scrolls
• Uses of papyrus


  • writing
  • food source
  • rope
  • sandals
  • window shades
  • material for toys such as dolls
  • amulets to ward off throat diseases
  • small fishing boats
• Ink


  The ancient Egyptians mixed vegetable gum, soot, and bee wax to make black ink. Eventually, they replaced the soot with other materials, such as red ochre, to create various ink colors.
• Ox-drawn plow


  The first ox-drawn plows appeared in Egypt as early as 2500 B.C. They were made of bronze, which easily scored the earth into furrows.