Mesopotamia: Cradle of Civilization PDF

Mesopotamia THE SWITCH TO AGRICULTURE AND LIVESTOCK BREEDING provided an abundance that allowed people to grow their populations and congregate in towns and cities for the first time in history; and wherever this transformation occurred, the world’s earliest recorded civilizations also appeared. Th...

Mesopotamia THE SWITCH TO AGRICULTURE AND LIVESTOCK BREEDING provided an abundance that allowed people to grow their populations and congregate in towns and cities for the first time in history; and wherever this transformation occurred, the world’s earliest recorded civilizations also appeared. The first of these was in a part of the Levantine Corridor that included the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—a land that the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia (“land between the rivers”), now the southeastern portion of Iraq. Widely considered as the “cradle of civilization”,1 Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer, and the Akkadian, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian empires. Sumerian Civilization THE POPULATION INCREASE due to the Agricultural Revolution led to the creation of farming villages, often in the same locations where nomadic hunter-gatherers had previously settled temporarily to plant their crops and graze their livestock. Grains were the usual basis of early agriculture, and the residents of those areas with fertile soil, sufficient rain, and a temperate climate to support wild grains were the pioneers of village development. From the farming village slowly evolved the much more socially differentiated town, with its various economic divisions and occupational specialties. From some small settlements grew the larger centers (called cities) of governmental power, religious ritual, manufacturing, trade, and cultural sophistication. A combination of agrarianism, city life, social complexity, government, trade networks, and writing produced the earliest known civilizations in world history. One of these was Sumeria, in southern Mesopotamia. This agrarian civilization was supported by extensive irrigation farming, pioneered by a people called the Sumerians, who came into Lower Mesopotamia from somewhere to the east about 5000 BCE. Gradually, the Sumerians created a series of small, competing kingdoms, or city-states. Here they developed a series of ideas and techniques that would provide the foundation of a distinct and highly influential civilization. The Sumerians were the first people to do a number of highly significant things. They created the first large cities. Each city was encircled for miles by villages of farmers who built the canals and provided the agricultural surplus on which the city elite depended. Most of these city-states began as places of ritual prayer and sacrificial offerings that honored one or more of their gods, whose goodwill was purchased so agriculture could flourish. Gradually, the ceremonial aspects of the shrines and their priests were joined by commercial and governmental pursuits, so it became a place in which a growing population of labor-specialized people was supported by sophisticated irrigation agriculture. They developed the first sophisticated system of writing. They built the first monumental buildings, using sun-baked bricks and the post-and-lintel system (beams held up by columns, used today in structures as varied as monkey bars and bridges) as the basic elements of support. They probably invented the wheel as a load-bearing transportation device. They were the first to design and build an irrigation system powered by the force of gravity. They were the first to use the plow and among the first to make bronze metal utensils and weaponry. The Akkadian Empire The early history of Mesopotamia under the Sumerians is a tale of great technological and cultural advances, marred by strife, disunion, and unceasing warfare among the principal city-states. Trade wars and disputes over water assured that no centralized governing power was possible. Conflicts seem to have been the order of the day, with city-state vying against city-state in a constant struggle for mastery over precious irrigated lands. Not until about 2300 BCE was the land between the rivers brought under one effective rule, and that was imposed by a Semitic invader known as Sargon the Great, who conquered the entire plain. Sargon established his capital in the new town of Akkad, near modern-day Baghdad, capital of Iraq. Although the Akkadian Empire lasted less than a century, its influence was great, for it spread Sumerian culture and methods far and wide in the Near and Middle East, through that wide belt of land reaching from Mesopotamia to Egypt that is called the Fertile Crescent. 1 1 Mesopotamian Language and Arts: Early in Mesopotamia’s history, Cuneiform script was invented. Cuneiform literally means “wedged sheped” due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on wet clay. Libraries were many in towns and temples during the Babylonian Empire. Men and women learned to read and write. Many Babylonian literary works are still studied today. One of the most famous of these was The Epic of Gilgamesh in twelve books. Science and technology: In Medicine, the oldest Babylonian texts date back to the old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2 nd millennium BC. The most extensive Babylonian medical text is the Diagnostic Book which introduced the concepts of Diagnosis, prognosis, physical examination, and prescription. As for technology, Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control, water storage and irrigation. They were also one of the first Bronze people in the world. They developed from copper and gold on to iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also copper, bronze, and iron were used for armor as well as for different weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, and maces. Religion: Mesopotamian religion was the first to be recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disk surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that heaven. They also believed that water was everywhere, the top bottom and sides, and that the universe was born from this enormous sea. In addition, Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic with a considerable number of gods such as Annu (god of the sky), Enlil (god of air), enki (god of rain), Marduk (the principal god of Babylon), Ashur (god od the Assyrian Empire). Law: One of the earliest known complete codes of laws originated in post-Sumerian Mesopotamia in the 1700s BCE, during the reign of the emperor Hammurabi. He is the first of the historic lawgivers whose work has survived into our times. Much of Hammurabi’s law code dealt with social and family problems, such as the support of widows and orphans, illegitimacy, adultery, and rape. People were not equal before the law: Husbands had a great deal of power over wives, fathers over children, rich over poor, free citizens over slaves. Nevertheless, a definite attempt was made to protect the defenseless and to see that all received justice. 2