 Attempt to answer the following riddle in your notes:  What building do you enter blind and come out seeing?

Today’s LEQs: Why did humans transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture? Was this humanity’s biggest mistake?

 First known agricultural villages c. 10,000 BCE  First known cities c. 5,000BCE  Eastern portion = Mesopotamia Let’s SCLARGE…

 Settled in the lower part of Fertile Crescent – a.k.a. Sumer  Created 12 city-states  Birthplace of cities (500,000 people by 2500BCE with 80% in cities!)  Shared a common culture  Complex social hierarchy with kings and priests at the top / Slaves at the bottom

 Men: could sell wife and children to pay a debt; could divorce easily  Women: could buy and sell property; operate own businesses; own slaves  Patriarchal but women more privileged than later cultures

 Rituals suggested significance of religion  i.e. New Years tradition – King of Ur symbolically married goddess of fertility each year  Royals buried in elaborate tombs; often buried with sacrificed attendants  Commoners buried under their house or in cemeteries outside city walls

 Semitic  Sumerians invented writing c. 3500BCE; first used for record keeping, later for literature & gov’t decrees  Pictograms first  Cuneiform by 3,000BCE  Epic of Gilgamesh & Code of Hammurabi = kind of a BIG DEAL…

 Invented first wheels – wagon wheel, pottery wheel  12 month lunar calendar (helped with agriculture)

 Creativity flourished! Took pride in elegant cities & monuments  Sculptures, mosaics, murals, stone bas reliefs  Arches, vaults, domes found in tombs = new skill  Walls for protection

 Practiced polytheism  Had one chief god for each city-state  Gods were unpredictable, angry, & selfish  Priests had power & prestige  Survival depended on will of gods  Built great temples called ziggurats

 Competition for land and water rights with foreign invaders led to the development of a monarchy (king)  King was a religious & political leader  King enforced law and set penalties (usually a fine)

 Key Leaders:  Sargon I – built the Akkadian Empire by uniting all of the Mesopotamian city-states (first empire!)  Hammurabi – created a code of law  (we’ll discuss this more later!!!)

 Trade central to urban life  Merchandise by land, river, & sea  Evidence of far off trade: shells from Mediterranean  Rich in agricultural goods but poor in raw materials; traded with North for wood, stone, and metal

 You completed independent research for homework  Now, collaborate with your groups to create a presentation on your assigned early civilization  You are responsible for teaching your assigned civilization to the rest of the class – be clear and concise when going through the SCLARGE categories