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Sumer is world oldest civilization

• It’s located in Mesopotamia, what’s present day Iraq in between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

• ‘meso’ is from Greek ‘mesos’ which means middle and the rest from Greek ‘potomas’ which means river (‘hippos’ was Greek for horse)

• What’s important about this location? Why did Sumer develop there?

• Structured around city-states

• Each city, with the surrounding area, acted as its own state (“country”)

• At the center was the main temple, the ziggurat

• The kings of each city-state began as war leaders and then started hereditary dynasties

Sumer was invaded quite a bit, but conquerors tended to take on Sumerian ways

• Akkadian invader, Sargon I, conquered and united the areas creating the first empire (2300 BC)

• Hammurabi comes along later and conquers Mesopotamia, establishes his capital at Babylon and puts down law code, what we now call the Code of Hammurabi.

Sumerian Contributions

1. Writing

• First known people to develop writing (cuneiform).

Sumerian Contributions

2. Arch

• Built arches using clay bricks that supported heavy wall openings for doorways and windows.

3. Plow

4. Wheeled vehicles

5. Mathematical ideas

• Using base 60, divided a circle into 360 degrees, an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds