background preloader

Mesopotamia

Facebook Twitter

Archaeologists discover possible ruins of ancient Sodom in the Holy Land ~ Clear Hype Media. Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. Before they settled down in various parts of the world, humans lived as nomads for tens of thousands of years. Nomads are people who have no permanent home and travel in search of food and safety. A typical nomadic group might include an extended family of about ten adults and their children. They would temporarily camp in an area for a few weeks or months -- the men hunting animals and the women gathering fruit, grains, seeds and nuts. When the nomads exhausted the resources in that area they moved on. advertisement Civilization developed slowly in different parts of the world. People began to settle in areas with abundant natural resources. The Fertile Crescent is a boomerang-shaped region that extends from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Some of the best farmland of the Fertile Crescent is on a narrow strip of land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Many different civilizations flourished in this small region. Cuneiform: 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the world’s oldest writing system. Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing in the world, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics Tuesday 26th May 2015 Submitted by: Emma Mason A counting of goats and rams in cuneiform script, ancient Ngirsu, Iraq, 2360 BC.

(DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images) Now, the curators of the world’s largest collection of cuneiform tablets – housed at the British Museum – have written a book exploring the history of cuneiform. Here, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor share six lesser-known facts about cuneiform… 1) Cuneiform is not a language The cuneiform writing system is also not an alphabet, and it doesn’t have letters. The two main languages written in Cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian (from ancient Iraq), although more than a dozen others are recorded. 2) Cuneiform was first used in around 3,400 BC The first stage used elementary pictures that were soon also used to record sounds. The language and writing system of ancient Sumeria. The Sumerian language is considered to be a language isolated in linguistics that does not seem to belong to any known linguistic form. Researchers have studied the ancient Sumerian language and tried making connections to other groups of languages but without success.

The Sumerians invented the pictorial hieroglyphics that later transformed into cuneiform writing. Together with the ancient Egyptian writing system, the ancient Sumerian can compete in a race for the oldest known written language. Known Sumerian texts discovered in the past include personal texts, business letters, transactions, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns and prayers, magic spells and scientific texts including mathematics, astronomy and medicine.

Much of this material survived in time through copies and transcripts. Although the Semitic race became ruler of the region, the language, religion and law in Mesopotamia remained Sumerian. “After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History | BooksOnTheMove. Mathematics in Ancient Iraq: A Social History Availablity Usually ships in 24 hours Publisher : Princeton University Press This monumental book traces the origins and development of mathematics in the ancient Middle East, from its earliest beginnings in the fourth millennium BCE to the end of indigenous intellectual culture in the second century BCE when cuneiform writing was gradually abandoned. Eleanor Robson offers a history like no other, examining ancient mathematics within its broader social, political, economic, and religious contexts, and showing that mathematics was not just an abstract discipline for elites but a key component in ordering society and understanding the world.

The region of modern-day Iraq is uniquely rich in evidence for ancient mathematics because its prehistoric inhabitants wrote on clay tablets, many hundreds of thousands of which have been archaeologically excavated, deciphered, and translated. Another long-forgotten Anatolian civilization rising from shadows. The latest study by the Switzerland-based Luwian Studies Foundation, which conducts research on the Luwian civilization that lived in western Anatolia circa 2000 B.C., has revealed that the ancient city of Troy has sections that have yet to be discovered.

According to the study, there are remains belonging to a Bronze Age city of the Luwian civilization five meters under the plain located on the western side of Hisarlık Hill. The academic study, which was prepared by geo-archaeologist and president of the foundation Eberhard Zangger and archeologist Serdal Mutlu, was published in Mersin University Cilicia Archaeological Research Center's annual academic magazine "Olba. " The paper was published after two years of study, and claims that the ancient city of Troy has not yet been fully excavated and the current findings report only on the upper city. Zangger says that if archaeologists dig west of the ancient city of Troy, they will discover the traces of a different civilization. Annenberg Media Exhibits: Collapse. Hundreds of years ago in what is now modern Honduras, Copán was a thriving civilization, a center of the cultural life of the Maya.

Tens of thousands of people made their home in the Copán Valley. Yet despite its importance, Copán went into decline. Across the vast territory of the ancient Maya, other important sites were sharing a similar fate. Classic Maya civilization was collapsing. Why did this great civilization fall? Can combine with external causes (such as war or natural disaster) to bring about a collapse.

Join us as we explore the collapse of four ancient civilizations. Ready to get started? "Collapse" is inspired by programs from Out of the Past, a video series from Annenberg Media. Persian Empire. The Historical Geography of Hittite and post-Hittite Anatolia. The Historical Geography of Hittite and post-Hittite Anatolia Prof.

Jak Yakar (yakar@post.tau.ac.il) An agreement with colleagues from the Hittitology department at Istanbul University has recently been concluded to undertake a major archaeological field investigation in Turkey. The purpose of this project (to be carried out by at least two Hittitologists and myself as the principal archaeologist) is to elucidate the historical geography of Hittite and post-Hittite Anatolia. Location of certain towns and boundaries of polities outside the core region of Hatti. As a preliminary step towards this project, in the summer of 1998 we undertook archaeological and geographical field investigation in southern Turkey. Yakar, Belkis Dincol and Avia Taffet under the title "The Borders of the Appanage Kingdom of Tarhuntassa--A Geographical and Archaeological Assessment", Anatolica XXVI (2000) pp.1-29.

MiddleEast-geography. Map: The Empire of Cyrus II. 300 Spartans: Xerxes' March to Greece. Maps: Ancient Iran Through Ages (726BCE to CE640) Ancient Iran through Ages (728BCE to CE651) Medes / Median (Mâdhâ) Dynasty; 728-550BCE Achaemenid (Hakhâmaneshiyân) Dynasty; 550-330BCE Parthian /Arsacid (Ashkâniân) Dynasty; 247BCE-CE224 Sasanid / Sasanian (Sâsâniân) Dynasty; CE224-640 Modern Iran.

Ancient Persia.  GEOGRAPHY OF ANATOLIA AND ASIA MINOR. Soulja Boi's Lesson on Ancient Mesopotamia. Learning about Ancient Mesopotamian Religion and Culture. Located in the Tigris-Euphrates valley was the land of Mesopotamia. It was here that the world’s first cities were founded between 4000 – 3500 BC by the Sumerian people. They developed their own belief system, with a variety of gods and goddesses.

They developed religious practices and rituals for worshiping these powerful deities. Their daily lives were also much different than those of the previous hunter-gatherer groups that wandered the world in a constant search for resources. The cultures of Mesopotamia had a polytheistic belief system, which means that the people believed in multiple gods instead of just one. They also believed in demons created by the gods, which could be good or evil. Each city had its own patron deity, some of which were connected to specialized occupations.

Some of the most important deities of ancient Mesopotamia were: An (Anu) – Sky god, as well as father of the gods, An was the king of all the gods. Enki (Ea) - God of fresh water, known for his wisdom. Collapse: Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia was known as the land between two rivers, the Tigris to the north and the Euphrates to the south. Rains were seasonal in this area, which meant that the land flooded in the winter and spring and water was scarce at other times. Farming in the region depended on irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In ancient times, many resources in Mesopotamia were scarce or absent, which stimulated trade within the region and beyond. Supported by lucrative trade with its neighbors, Mesopotamia grew to become a powerful empire. Mashkan-shapir was a typical Mesopotamian city, located about 20 miles from the Tigris River and connected to the river by a network of canals.

Despite a flourishing civilization, Mashkan-shapir was abandoned within only 20 years of its settlement. Poisoned fields: A contributor to collapse Along with factors such as war and changes in the environment, scientists now believe irrigation techniques played an important role in Mashkan-shapir's collapse. Legacy - The Origins of Civilization - Episode 1: Iraq, the Cradle Of Civilization (Documentary)

Introduction to Mesopotamian Civilisation. Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization. Museum of Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamian Innovations. Mesopotamia - The British Museum. Mesopotamian Civilization | Ancient History | History of Mesopotamia. Ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. Ancient Iraq. Mesopotamian Kings: History, Politics & Religion - Western Civilization I Video. Mesopotamian Kings When you hear the word 'king,' do you think of the ruler of just one country?

In most instances, this rings true. However, ancient Mesopotamia was a region that contained several city-states, much like Italy during the Italian Renaissance period. Mesopotamia at this time did not have a centralized government but, instead, had many smaller regions with their own separate governments. The early kings ruled over only their own city-states. Lacking a centralized government and leader, the ancient region was prone to internal fighting among the kings for land and resources. Religion in Mesopotamia Religion in Mesopotamia served as a means to explain the uncertainty that developed as a result of the unpredictable weather conditions. Most people had a relationship with their personal deity. Religion and Politics Rule Mesopotamia Religion was often one aspect that forged a common bond among the members of a Mesopotamian city-state. The Power of Priests Lesson Summary. Mesopotamia, A History of. A Place For Civilization To Begin.

Mesopotamia Edited By: Robert Guisepi Mesopotamia is a region, not a country. Refer to the individual Peoples that made up Mesopotamia; the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and to some degree the Hittites, Phoenicians and Persians In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad, in modern Iraq; it is Al-Jazirah ("The Island") of the Arabs. Questions as to what ancient Mesopotamian civilization did and did not accomplish, how it influenced its neighbors and successors, and what its legacy has transmitted are posed from the standpoint of 20th-century civilization and are in part colored by ethical overtones, so that the answers can only be relative.

Mesopotamia and Education As a civilization contemporary with Egyptian civilization, Mesopotamia developed education quite similar to that of its counterpart with respect to its purpose and training. Back to Main menu World History Center. Mesopotamian Civilization ★ Ancient Mesopotamia Documentary History - Lost Civilizations 1. New Discovery Of The Oldest Civilization On Earth Existed In Iran ( Persia ) Mesopotamia (Sumerians, first civilization on earth) Human Origins from Sumerians, Annunaki, and Nibiru (Full Documentary) Ancient Mesopotamia - The Sumerians. Ancient Mesopotamia and the Sumerians The word Mesopotamia comes from Greek words meaning "land between the rivers.

" The rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates. The first settlers to this region did not speak Greek, it was only thousands of years later that the Greek-speaking Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, conquered this land and carried with him his culture. Lower Mesopotamia is located the modern country of Iraq, while Upper Mesopotamia is in Syria and Turkey. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle, or beginning, of civilization. Here large cities lined the rivers and many advances took place. Mesopotamia at first glance does not look like an ideal place for a civilization to flourish. The Sumerians were the first people to migrate to Mesopotamia, they created a great civilization.

A typical Sumerian city-state, notice the ziggurat, the tallest building in the city. The Sumerians had a common language and believed in the same gods and goddesses. In 1922, English archaeologist, C. Royal Tombs of Ur. HISTORY OF MESOPOTAMIA. The conqueror of Ur is a usurper, which is no doubt why he adopts the name Sargon - meaning the 'true king'. He is Semitic in origin, and tradition states that he begins life as a fruit grower. He gradually conquers the Sumerian cities - first Kish, then Uruk, then Ur - before founding a capital city of his own, Akkad. He then adopts a new title, 'King of the Nation'. His is the first Semitic dynasty in history, and his civil servants use a script which is an important innovation in the history of writing.

Like the scribes of Ebla, whose archive has recently been discovered, they adapt the Sumerian cuneiform to meet the needs of a Semitic language. Writing systems will often, in later centuries, demonstrate a similar flexibility. StarTeach Astronomy Education. Purposes of Astronomy in Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization As in most ancient cultures, astronomy was actually practiced as astrology. Astronomical events, whether they were every-day occurences or rare incidents, had a deep religious meaning for the people.

It was believed that all things happened for a reason. This spiritual angle often spilled over onto the social or political levels as well. A great deal of astronomical mythology was handed down from the Sumerians. However, besides being the manifestation of legends, the constellations provided a practical use for the people of ancient Mesopotamia. The Ancient World | Mesopotamia. What were the innovations of Mesopotamian civilization. Sumer, The first Civilization from Wikipedia. What The Ancients Did For Us The Mesopotamians Bbc Documentry. MEDICINE IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA. Religion. Mesopotamia: Religion. Gods. What does The Epic of Gilgamesh reveal to us about Mesopotamian culture/religion? - Homework Help.

Mesopotamian Religion. Ant3145-mesopotamia.wikispaces. Depiction_of_Ancient_Mesopotamian_Religion_through_art_and_architecture. Mesopotamian Religion. MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION by british british on Prezi. Ancient-Mesopotamian-Accounting-Money-Labor. The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution. Early Dynastic Period And Hammurabi | Mesopotamian Civilization | Mesopotamian History. Mesopotamia. History - Ancient History in depth: Mesopotamia. Lecture 2: Ancient Western Asia and the Civilization of Mesopotamia. Ancient Babylon: Center of Mesopotamian Civilization. Babylon: A Wonder of the Ancient World. World History Lesson 1- Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia: Crash Course World History #3.