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Ancient Mesopotamia -The SumeriansAncient Mesopotamia - The Sumerians
The World's first Great Civilization
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.
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The Fertile Crescent
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. It is hot and very dry. There is very little rainfall in Lower Mesopotamia. However, snow, melting in the mountains at the source of these two rivers, created an annual flooding. The flooding deposited silt, which is fertile, rich, soil, on the banks of the rivers every year. This is why Mesopotamia is part of the fertile crescent, an area of land in the Middle East that is rich in fertile soil and crescent-shaped.
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The Sumerians were the first people to migrate to Mesopotamia, they created a great civilization. Beginning around 5,500 years ago, the Sumerians built cities along the rivers in Lower Mesopotamia, specialized, cooperated, and made many advances in technology. The wheel, plow, and writing (a system which we call cuneiform) are examples of their achievements. The farmers in Sumer created levees to hold back the floods from their fields and cut canals to channel river water to the fields. The use of levees and canals is called irrigation, another Sumerian invention. (You can play an irrigation simulation game at the British Museum Mesopotamia website by opening the link at the bottom of this page.)
The Fertile Crescent
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. The belief in more than one god is called polytheism. There were seven great city-states, each with its own king and a building called a ziggurat, a large pyramid-shaped building with a temple at the top, dedicated to a Sumerian deity. Although the Sumerian city-states had much in common, they fought for control of the river water, a valuable resource. Each city-state needed an army to protect itself from its neighbors.
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Watch the video clip below from Discovery Education, as Nissaba, a young Sumerian girl, talks about her people's accomplishments. (This clip is no longer available)
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In 1922, English archaeologist, C. Leonard Woolley went to Southern Iraq in hopes of finding the Sumerian city-state of Ur. Woolley learned archaeology from some of the best of his day, and now he was ready to strike off on his own. Many people felt that Ur was only a myth, but Woolley, the son of a clergyman, was fascinated by the stories his father told about Ur, which, according to the Bible, was the birth place of Abraham. Abraham is a central figure of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, three monotheistic religions
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