2.

SUMMER – THE FIRST CIVILIZATION

1. About Mesopotamia (“The Land between the Rivers”)

- Geographical Location
+ The fertile valleys of Tigris and Euphrates rivers
+ Modern-day territory: Iraq
- Time
+ 6000 B.C.E. - 334 B.C.E.  

2. Sumer (6000-2004 B.C.E)

- About Sumer
+The Sumerians resided in the Southern half of Mesopotamia.
+ The Sumerians were the earliest developed civilization in our recorded
history.
+ The Sumerians were the ‘first’ in many areas of expertise.
- Sumerian Cities
+ Centers of political and military authority
+ Economic centers
+ Cultural centers
 They differed markedly from Neolithic villages.
- Timeline
+ 6000-5000 BC: The first Sumerians inhabited Mesopotamia and constructed
irrigation networks
+ 4000 BC: Sumerians built the world’s first cities
+ 3000 BC: All city-states had Kings claiming absolute authority with their
realms
+ 2350 BC: Mesopotamia fell under control of powerful regional empires
+ 2004 BC: The 3rd Dynasty of Ur collapsed
3. Achievements
- First city-states: As the Sumerian villages grew into large cities, they formed
city-states. This is where a city government would rule the city as well as the land
around it. These city-states often fought each other. They built walls around their
cities for protection. Farmland was outside the walls, but people would retreat to
the city when invaders came.
- Written law: The Code of Ur-Nammu It is considered the oldest law discovered
to date, not only in Mesopotamia, but across the entire world. This law was used to
uphold justice and destroy oppression throughout the country. The code begins
with an introduction that clearly relies on Divine Command Theory.
A number of issues are addressed, including women’s rights (for
example, a divorced woman who married without a contract or slavery),
punishments for crimes (honor crimes, a slave who equates herself with her
mistress, bearing false witness, pillaging someone else’s farmlands, neglect of
rented lands, all types of assault, sexual crimes, false accusations, theft),
compensation and retribution, property laws and environmental laws.
- Organized Armies: Sumerian armies had excellent organization, weapons and
leadership. Sumerian kings first organized armies to fight other city-states over
water usage and land boundaries. The armies included professional soldiers and
temporary citizen-soldiers. The citizen-soldiers were farmers whom the king
forced to serve in the army during wartime. If they refused to serve, scholars
believe they may have been punished with death.
Sumerian armies were made up of different military units. First
into battle were the chariots, which were ancient "tanks" pulled by donkeys. These
vehicles were square, had a wooden frame, and had two or four wheels. Armies
also had two groups of infantries, or foot soldiers, who marched into battle in a
tightly organized formation. The heavy infantry wore copper helmets and carried
short-handled spears. The light infantry wore light helmets and carried axes. All
soldiers wore shields to protect themselves from the enemy’s arrows. However,
large numbers of soldiers still died in army battles. One king claimed that his army
killed 12,650 soldiers in a single battle. After the fighting was over, the winning
side celebrated their victory by beheading prisoners from the losing side. They also
kept some prisoners as slaves.
- Technological advances
+ Mass-Produced Pottery: Other ancient people made pottery by hand, but the
Sumerians were the first to develop the turning wheel, a device that allowed them
to mass-produce it. That enabled them to churn out large numbers of items such as
containers for workers’ rations, sort of the ancient forerunner of Tupperware.
+ Hydraulic Engineering: The Sumerians figured out how to collect and channel
the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—and the rich silt that it contained
—and then use it to water and fertilize their farm fields. They designed complex
systems of canals, with dams constructed of reeds, palm trunks and mud whose
gates could be opened or closed to regulate the flow of water.
  + The Chariot: The Sumerians didn’t invent wheeled vehicles, but they
probably developed the first two-wheeled chariot in which a driver drove a team of
animals. there’s evidence the Sumerians had such carts for transportation in the
3000s B.C., but they were probably used for ceremonies or by the military, rather
than as a means to get around the countryside, where the rough terrain would have
made wheeled travel difficult.
+ The Plow: The Sumerians invented the plow, a vital technology in farming.
They even produced a manual that gave farmers detailed instructions on how to use
various types of plows. And they specified the prayer that should be recited to pay
homage to Ninkilim, the goddess of field rodents, in order to protect the grain from
being eaten.
+Textile Mills: While other cultures in the Middle East gathered wool and used
it to weave fabric for clothing, the Sumerians were the first to do it on an industrial
scale. The Sumerians were the first to cross kin lines and form larger working
organizations for making textiles—the predecessors of modern manufacturing
companies.
+ Mass-Produced Bricks: To make up for a shortage of stones and timber for
building houses and temples, the Sumerians created molds for making bricks out of
clay, according to Kramer. While they weren’t the first to use clay as a building
material, “the innovation is the ability to produce bricks in large amounts, and put
them together on a large scale,” Jones explains. Their buildings might not have
been as durable as stone ones, but they were able to build more of them and create
larger cities.
 
 + Metallurgy: One of the Sumerians' most important achievements was superb
metalworking. Sumerians worked with a variety of metals, including gold, silver,
tin, lead, copper, and bronze. Metalworkers used these metals to create many
different kinds of weapons, tools, and luxury items. For example, they made
weapons such as swords, arrowheads, and harpoons. To make weapons,
metalworkers first mixed melted copper with tin to make a new, stronger metal
called bronze. They then poured the liquid bronze into casts and let it harden into
finished weapons. Metalworkers also cast bronze into such tools as axes, knives,
saws, and hoes. For wealthy people, metalworkers hammered shiny metals such as
gold and silver into mirrors, necklaces, and statues. 
+ Sailboat: The Sumerians' invention of the sailboat allowed them to more
easily travel and transport traded goods by water. The earliest sailboats were small
and shaped like round baskets. They were made of reeds and covered with animal
skins. The sailboats had a central post called a mast to which a single sail was
attached. The sail powered the sailboat by catching the wind and pushing the boat
forward. People used these early boats mostly for sailing on rivers and canals.
- Writing: It’s likely, though not 100 percent certain, that the Sumerians were the
first to develop a writing system. The writing system, invented by the Sumerians,
emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. At first, this writing was
representational: a bull might be represented by a picture of a bull, and a
pictograph of barley signified the word barley. Though writing began as pictures,
this system was inconvenient for conveying anything other than simple nouns, and
it became increasingly abstract as it evolved to encompass more abstract concepts,
eventually taking form in the world’s earliest writing: cuneiform. They did that
with a system of pictographs, which essentially were drawings of various objects.
Eventually, though, they began to combine pictographs to express ideas and
actions. The pictographs evolved into symbols that stood for words and sounds.
- Mathematics: Primitive people counted using simple methods, such as putting
notches on bones, but it was the Sumerians who developed a formal numbering
system based on units of 60. At first, they used reeds to keep track of the units, but
eventually, with the development of cuneiform, they used vertical marks on the
clay tablets. Their system helped lay the groundwork for the mathematical
calculations of civilizations that followed. 
 Sumerians used multiplication tables and fractions to accurately
measure their land boundaries. They also used calculations to weigh goods, to
determine how much to enlarge canals, and to count large numbers of bricks for
building projects. In addition, mathematics helped people learn the positions of the
sun, moon, and planets. 
- Architecture:
+Arch: Some archaeologists believe that the arch was the Sumerians' greatest
architectural achievement. Made of bricks, Sumerian arches were inverted U- or V-
shaped openings built above doorways. Arches added both strength and beauty to
Sumerian architecture.
+ Ziggurat: One of the Sumerians' key contributions to ancient architecture was
the temple tower known as a ziggurat. The word ziggurat means “mountain of
God." Ziggurats were extremely important to Sumerians because of their religious
significance. Ziggurats were made of mud bricks and were built near temples
located in the center of each city-state.  Inside, the ziggurats were decorated with
zigzag and triangle patterns on the walls and columns.

4. Meaning
- Beside the fact that the ancient Sumerians were the earliest civilization in our
recorded history, they are believed to give us a lot of firsts: The first kingdom and
then Empire; The first city-states; The first democracy, the first autocracy; The
pioneered writing; Schooling; Organized religion; Lawmaking, art & literature; etc
- Mesopotamians - in particular Sumerians - deeply influenced the development
and experiences of peoples living far beyond Mesopotamia.
+ Occasionally migrants left Mesopotamia and carried their inherited traditions
to new lands.
+ On the contrary, other peoples adopted Mesopotamian ways selectively and
adapted them to their needs and interests.
The impact of Sumerian society shows that, even in early times, complex
agricultural societies organized around cities had strong potential to influence the
development of distant human communities.