David Wang

Mesopotamia(land between river)

• Indicators of civilization
• Cities served as administrative centers
• A political system based on control of territory rather than kinship
• A sign. # of ppl engaged in non food productions
• Status distinctions accumulation of wealth
• System for keeping permanent
• long distance trade
• Major advances in sciences and arts
• Located between Tigris and Euphrates rivers, present day Iraq
• 3000BCE, learned to construct wells
• 4000BCE, cows farms, tunnels
• Sumerians earliest living in Mesopotamia
• 2000 BCE nomads the sumites dominate
• Transformation
• Irrigation systems (lost of ppl make)
• Villages to city
• City to city state (urban center in agri area)
• Protection tech exchange for food
• Mesopotamia early place w/ lots of city states, charismatic leader unites
• Leadership type
• Priest= more power, there first (more est power)
• Lugal (big man) building not centrally located
• Mesop- poly. Priest control temple
• Prob between religious and political leaders
• Saragon 2350 BCE (first ruler whose name is known)
• 1st to united cities
• Semitic stock
• Uniform system of weigh and masses
• Documentation
• Third dynasty of UR 2112- 2004 BCE
• Followed akkad city-state
• Smaller
• Good roads
• Good system of communication and trade
• Hammurabi 1792- 1750 BCE
• Babylon
• Aggr. Milit campaigns
• Code of law
• Barter system
• Mesopotamia system
• 3 class
• Free landowning/ farm and artisan, pottery, wood, attached to land) slaves employed and domestic
service
• Penalties on crime depend on class higher class lets ppl get away more
• Slaves forced to wear hairstyle
• Slaves can buy freedom
• Men more dominant because there stronger, more food getting
David Wang

• More food more children, woman preg with children

• Woman out of preg into hoe more causes loss of status
• Lots of gods
• Social classes
• Free landowning class (royalty, officials, priests, warriors, and merchants)
• Dependant farmers and artisans (legally, attached to land)
• Slaves (primarily, domestic service)
• Law justice and inequality
• Hammurabi’s code
• Penalties for crimes depended on the offenders class
• All slaves, dependant workers, free labored were compensated
• Woman lost social standing and freedoms
• Religion
• Many gods who embodied the forces of natures
• Gods were anthropomorphic (live like human and behaved like ppl)
• Office of priests was hereditary
• One god w/ a lot of names
• technology
• Irrigation
• Writing
• Carts and sleds
• Metallurgy (bronze)
• Pottery/ pottery wheel
• Basic 60 number system
• Used wedge to write
• Literacy not very imp
• Back then wedges drawn by cattle
• Bronze better than stone doesn’t break sharp
• Hear classes had bronze
• Cuneiform
• Appeared 3300 BCE
• Might have originated from a system of token used to keep track of property
• Used a sharpened reed – wedge shaped
• Several hundred signs
• Small percent literate
• Metallurgy
• Mixed copper and arsenic to make bronze
• More malleable than stone
• Poured in molds
• Can be repaired
• Poor couldn’t afford
• Pottery
• Clay was used form many things because of its abundance
• Pottery bricks etc
• Pottery wheel used by 4000 BCE