Early People

While homo sapiens-humans-have been around for a couple hundred thousand years, for most of their history they were not considered

“civilized.”

Humans originally lived in small groups and gathered

nuts and berries and hunted in order to survive. Many

were nomadic. That is, they moved from one place to

another.

They sometimes moved to follow herds of animals, or they may

have had to search for of plants, nuts, and berries. They were

hunter/gatherers.

Overpopulation may have diminished the food supply, or a natural disaster may have made

moving necessary.

It was in the river valleys of Southwest Asia and North Africa that the earliest

civilizations began. The term “Fertile Crescent” referred to an area in the

Middle East where the soil was fertile and the land was

shaped in a crescent. It was an ideal place for nomadic people to settle, build cities, and eventually

develop civilizations.

Mesopotamia was the name of a valley between the Tigris and

Euphrates rivers, found in the eastern part of the Fertile

Crescent. Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning “land between two

rivers.” (The Nile River valley was also an early center of civilization.)

Ancient Civilizations

With the abundance of food found in the wild area of the Fertile

Crescent, people no longer needed to move around to find food.

They learned to plant their own seeds and found it was easier to

grow crops in the rich soil and raise animals for food than to hunt and

gather.

They stayed in one place, working together farming, and so began forming communities—first tiny settlements, then villages, then

cities.

As agricultural practices improved, the people were able to grow more crops than they could eat and raise more animals than they needed, so

they began to trade the excess crops and animals with others.

Social, political, legal & technological

developments are all characteristics of a

civilization.

As agriculture improved, trading increased, populations grew, cities grew…and people needed to invent ways to deal with their new way of life.

This shift from hunting and gathering to farming about 6,000 years ago, is when civilizations began to develop.

Other characteristics of civilization include:

the invention of writing, mathematics, improved agricultural

practices, sophisticated

architecture, and trade/economics.

People talk about Mesopotamia as if it were a single civilization or culture.

But, Mesopotamia was an area or region—not a civilization.

At any given time, the region of Mesopotamia was composed of several independent city-states, each with its own religion, laws, language, and government.

Many different civilizations existed in ancient Mesopotamia over time. Some existed at the same time. For example, a certain culture may have dominated a

certain period, while other cultures existed at the same time, seeking to become independent.

Some cultures that existed in this area are:Sumerian Assyrian Babylonian Canaanite

Philistine Egyptian Israelite

SumeriansThe first group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia was

the Sumerians.

They originally lived in the mountains but moved to the Fertile Crescent, between the Tigris and Euphrates

rivers, to take advantage of the fertile soil. The hot, dry climate of Mesopotamia was mixed with seasonal

flooding, which made farming a challenge.

Farmers in ancient Mesopotamia learned to deal with these problems by developing irrigation systems to water crops during dry spells and building levees to control the floods. These improvements in farming,

along with the development of the plow, made the new farmers successful in producing large amounts of

grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Levees

Irrigation—shaduf Plow

As a result, the Sumerians had a stable food supply and not everyone was needed to farm, hunt, or fish. So, some Sumerians became tradesmen, merchants, soldiers, priests, government officials, and artists.

Their country was called Sumer.

The Sumerians were given credit for many inventions.

One of the most important was the invention of a written

language.

Writing was invented by the Sumerians to keep records. Their writing was very simple. It was composed of pictures called pictographs. Professional writers, called scribes, used a wedge-shaped stylus to draw pictures on clay tablets that, when baked, became permanent records. Over a period of time, the writing became more sophisticated. The pictures were replaced with shapes and lines.

This type of writing is called cuneiform and became the basis for later writing in Mesopotamia. It also seems to have influenced Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Cuneiform: “Wedge Shaped Writing”

Deciphering Cuneiform

The Sumerians also had a numbering system based on the number 60.

We still use the Sumerian system today when measuring time and in math…

• sixty seconds make a minute• sixty minutes makes an hour

• a circle has 360 degrees

The buildings of Sumer were different from other civilizations, such as the

Egyptians. Sumerians learned how to use a

keystone to make arches.

A keystone is a wedge-shaped stone in an arch that causes the arch to

lock together.

The doorways, gates, and other openings in the

Sumerian cities had arches. Similar openings in

Egyptian buildings were square.

KEYSTONE

Other Sumerian inventions were the wheel (which was either developed first for transporting heavy items or making pottery—

we’re not sure which came first),

the water clock, the twelve-month calendar,

and the sailboat.

(Not bad for a first go at civilization!!!)

So, if you use any of these things … you have the ancient Sumerians

of Mesopotamia to thank!!!!!

Between 3500 and 2000 B.C., the Sumerians were living in large villages.

Eventually they became prosperous, and the

villages developed into self-governing city-

states.

The buildings in these city-states were made of sun-dried mud bricks.

The Sumerians used these mud bricks as building

materials because there was no building stone and very little timber

in Sumer, and the rivers were a great

source for mud.

Religion was important to the Sumerians.

At the center of each city-state was a temple that was

surrounded by courts and public buildings. These temples were

called ziggurats.

Ziggurats were originally built on platforms, but eventually became

temple-towers brightly decorated with glazed bricks.

They were like huge pyramids with terraced sides that were flat

on the top.

They must have been pretty spectacular, shining and

gleaming with color, rising up above the other low, mud-colored

buildings!

Paying tribute at the temple or ziggurat was an important part of Sumerian culture.

Priest KingsSumerians had many gods.

They believed that gods spoke to them through their priests. Since priests were the

representatives of the gods, they had a great deal of power.

When a priest commanded that something be done, the people believed the command was

actually coming from one of their gods, and they obeyed.

The ability to make important decisions and have the people obey them elevated the status of

priests.

When religious leaders rule, this form of government is called theocracy.

While Mesopotamia offered many advantages for

settlement, such as rich soil, water, and game, there was

one great disadvantage.

The land did not provide any natural protection from invaders. Enemies could easily march into Sumer from almost any

direction.

This made Sumerians vulnerable to attack, not only form foreign armies, but from other Sumerians

cities as well. Wars between Sumerian cities

were common.

One Great Disadvantage

The importance of natural protection cannot be

overstated.

Compare the location of Egypt with Sumer, for example. A

desert on both sides of the Nile River protects Egypt. Nations

wanting to conquer Egypt would have a difficult time overcoming these natural barriers to launch

an attack. Consequently, Egypt’s culture grew quickly.

Whereas, Sumer, constantly fending off attacks, grew more

modestly.

Natural Protection —or the Lack of It!

AkkadiansAnother group that moved into Mesopotamia was the Akkadians, who had been living on the Arab peninsula. The Akkadians were a Semitic people, meaning their language was similar to Arabic and Hebrew. The Akkadians formed their own country where the Tigris and Euphrates River were close together. Their country was called Akkad. The Akkadians adopted much of the Sumerian culture. After many clashes between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, more Semites invaded Sumer. The Akkadian invaders eventually conquered and absorbed the Sumerian culture. This combined civilization lasted until about 1950 B.C. when more newcomers captured Ur. Mesopotamia’s most important city was Ur.

PhoeniciansThe Phoenicians were a

legendary sea-faring and trading people who lived

along the Mediterranean coast. Their homeland featured

mountains with trees famous in the Near East as the “Cedars of

Lebanon.”

These cedars were used to build the boats in which the

Phoenicians sailed the Mediterranean and beyond to trade art, textiles (cloth or

fabric), glassware, precious stones and perfume .

The result was not only trade but cultural diffusion—

or the spreading of knowledge and culture

through these ancient trade routes!

Phoenician means "of purple merchants."

The sea also provided the Phoenicians with their most expensive product, a purple dye that they got from the murex, a type of sea snail. It was so rare and so

expensive that the color purple came to represent the color of royalty around the world for thousands of

years!

A lot of work went into producing the dye, as more than 9,000 mollusks were needed to create just one

gram of Tyrian purple.

Since only wealthy rulers could afford to buy and wear the color, it became associated with the royalty of Rome, Egypt, and Persia.

Purple also came to represent spirituality and holiness because the ancient emperors, kings and queens that wore the color were often thought of as gods or descendants of the gods.

The status associated with Phoenician purple continued for centuries. In fact, Queen Elizabeth I forbade anyone except close members of the royal family to wear the color!

The Phoenicians became legendary traders who spread Semitic culture across the Mediterranean, eventually discovering the Atlantic Ocean, rounding Africa, landing in England and Ireland and building many cities in Western Europe and on the Atlantic coast of Africa!!!

But it was their intellectual contribution to society that guaranteed their place in history….

They gave the world the twenty-two "magic signs" called the alphabet, the basis of our modern alphabet and numerical figures!!!

BabylonSumer was located at the downstream end of

Mesopotamia. Upstream and later in time (2000-1600 BC) was

Babylon.

Hammurabi’s CodeHammurabi was the most famous King of Babylon.

He issued the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive set of laws—both criminal and civil—that was the first written laws ever.

This is huge because it established the RULE of LAW —order in society which we still live under today!

Before this, if someone was wronged, he or his family would take matters into their own hands and retaliate. Sometimes the retaliation would be far worse than the original crime—even death!

So, the Code of Hammurabi put a limit on such actions and made sure that the punishment could be no worse than the crime.

This is the "eye for an eye" theory of punishment, which though pretty barbarian in its application, is basically the concept of making the punishment fit the crime.

Hammurabi’s Code of Law

In 1790 BC, the king wrote the world’s first collection of laws—282 specific laws.

Legal Principles of Hammurabi

Established the Rule of Law—fairness and justice in that the punishment fit the crime.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

Old Testament approach comes from this.

First use of the presumption of innocence!

Punishments could also be based upon social class or standing of lawbreaker

If a commoner knocks out the eye of a patrician (higher class) then he shall lose his eye, too (“an eye for an eye”). But if a surgeon operates on a person’s eye and causes the person to lose their eye, he will lose his hands.

The Code of Hammurabi even recognized such modern concepts as that of corporate personality (recognizing corporations as individual entities with rights—right to a name of its own, the right to own, sell, lease or mortgage property of its own, the right to sue and be sued, etc.)

Government had a responsibility for what occurred in society.

Typically, invaders take over and absorb the prior culture and their advancements. The exception to this is when BARBARIANS

conquer a civilization.

----------------------------

About 1600 BC, the Babylonian Empire fell to nomadic warriors resulting in a regression of culture.

The resulting Dark Age marks the beginning of the end of the Ancient Period of History.

Near the Phoenicians, along the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, was a group

of wandering herders named the Israelites—a Semitic, Hebrew-

speaking people of the ancient Near East.

Their early migrations started in Sumer and included a period of

captivity in Egypt, but they considered the land of Palestine their “Promise

Land.”

The Israelites were never a great power, but their kings did build a

temple in their capital city of Jerusalem. This temple became the

focus of their religion, Judaism.

Judaism was the earth’s first monotheistic religion and the

predecessor of Christianity, Islam, and Modern Judaism.

Israelites

These earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia have affected world history tremendously, not only in

social, legal, and business areas, but in religion as well.

Many of the great religions that exist in the world today had their beginnings in the area known as the Fertile

Crescent.

To the west of Mesopotamia was the Sinai Peninsula, a desert area that guards the

entrance to Egypt. Here, protected, the Egyptian civilization flourished along the banks of

the Nile River.

Being a bit isolated from the rest of the ancient Near East, Egypt developed its own style and way of doing things—it’s own culture! For example, its writing was hieroglyphics, not cuneiform. And, instead of writing on clay tablets, the Egyptians

developed an early form of paper called

papyrus.

Also, the Egyptians built their monuments of stone, so they have stood for thousands of years. Thus, the Egyptian civilization with its great cities like Thebes and Memphis was never entirely lost.

In contrast, the Sumerians, with their clay monuments and mud brick buildings, were nearly forgotten. Their ziggurats weathered into mounds

of dust that were nearly forgotten. However, archaeologists later viewed the mounds as clues

about locations of past civilizations. When archaeologists dug, they found the baked clay

tablets that recorded what we now know of this civilization.

Egyptians

Then, of course,

the ancient Egyptian culture also had…

The ancient Egyptians believed that when someone died, their soul left their body. The soul would then return and be reunited with the body after it was

buried. However, the soul needed to be able to find and recognize the body in order to live forever.

The accomplishments of past civilizations have shaped the world we know today

These civilizations borrowed from previous cultures, adopting those elements they liked while rejecting those elements they didn’t. This process, repeated many times,

has given us the world we live in today.

Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time, made the point best when he said, “If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of

giants.” He was making the point that every inventor, scientist, philosopher, and artist is able to build or add to the

inventions and accomplishments of those who have gone before.

Many times these accomplishments can be traced to one person. Others are traced back to groups of people or to a

civilization.