The First Civilization
 Man started out as hunters and
gatherers
 First farmers were more than likely
women
 With the advent of farming man could
become more settled
 Started as small villages (150 people or
so)
 Became small towns then cities
 Could not have happened without the
development of domestication of
various animals and/or plants such as
wheat
 Bending animals and plants to fit human needs
 Dogs , Cattle, Sheep etc.
 Provide a constant source of water
 Required for livestock and crops
 First civilizations around the world formed on or near rivers
 Mesopotamia in Greek means “land between the rivers”
 Area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is known as
Mesopotamia
 Mesopotamia is part of the Fertile Crescent, a large arc of rich,
or fertile, farmland
 The Fertile Crescent extends from the Persian Gulf to the
Mediterranean Sea
 Mesopotamia was first settled by hunter-gatherers more
than 12,000 years ago
 The first farm settlements formed in Mesopotamia about
7000 BC
 Yearly floods brought silt
 Silt is a mixture of rich soil and tiny rocks, to the land
 Made the land ideal for farming.
 Farmers grew wheat, barley, and other types of grain
 Livestock, birds, and fish were also good sources of food
Controlling Water
• Used irrigation, a
way of supplying
water to an area of
land
–Dug out large
storage basins
to collect rain
Food Surpluses
Appearance of
Cities
• Irrigation increased
amount farmers
could grow.
• Settlements grew
both in size and
complexity.
• Produced food
surplus, or more
than they needed
• Developed cities
between 4000 and
3000 BC
• Fewer needed to
farm
• Society still based
on agriculture
–Dug canals,
human-made
• New occupations
waterways, to
developed.
connect the
basins to
• Division of labor–
irrigation ditches
each worker
specialized in a
• Built up the rivers’
particular task or
banks to prevent
job
flooding
• Developed laws and
government
• Cities became
important trading
centers and power
bases for
government.
• Cities were the
political, religious,
cultural, and
economic centers.
 By 3000 BCE several hundred thousand
had settled in a part of Mesopotamia
they called Sumer
 Developed an advanced society and the world’s
first civilization.
 Most Sumerians were farmers
 Society centers were the urban, or city,
areas
 Basic political unit of Sumer was the
city-state
 Consists of a central city and all the countryside
around it
 Combining the rural and urban parts.
 City-States fought each other to gain
more farmland or resources
 Built strong armies and thick walls
around cities
 Hierarchy
 Grouping of individuals based on trade,
wealth, religious, or any other category
 Social Hierarchy
 Grouping of individuals based on class or
rank
 Kings of Sumer claimed that they
had been chosen by the gods to
rule
 Then came priests under the King
 Next were skilled craftspeople,
merchants, and traders
 Second to last group were farmers
and laborers made up the large
working class
 Last class in the social hierarchy
were the slaves
Kings of
Sumer
Priests
Craftsmen and
Traders
Farmers
Slaves
Women
 Took care of home and
children
 Some in upper-class were
educated
 Some educated women
were priestesses and
helped shape Sumerian
culture.
 One priestess, a daughter of
Sargon, Enheduanna, was
the first known female
writer in history
Men
 Held all political power
 Made laws for everyone
 Were educated depending
on their social class
 Farmers, soldiers,
craftsmen, traders, etc.

Used for wheeled vehicles and a potter’s wheel to spin clay
as a craftsperson shapes it into bowls
Plow

Pulled by oxen to prepare soil for planting
Clock

Used falling water to measure time
Sewers

Built under city streets to carry waste away
Bronze

Used to make strong tools and weapons
Makeup and
Glass Jewelry

For personal ornamentation
Wheel

Statues of gods were created for temples. Small objects were also
created out of ivory and rare woods.

Beautiful works were created with advanced methods using imported
gold, silver, and gems.

Cylinder seals were stone cylinders engraved with designs. When
rolled over clay, the designs leave behind an imprint. They were used
to show ownership of containers, to sign documents, and to decorate
other clay objects.

Music and dance provided entertainment in marketplaces, homes,
palaces, and temples. People sang and played instruments such as
reed pipes, drums, tambourines, and harplike stringed instruments
called lyres.
Sculpture
Jewelry
Cylinder
Seals
Music and
Dance
 Sumerians developed
cuneiform
 World’s first system of writing.
 Used sharp tools called styluses to
make wedge-shaped symbols on clay
tablets
 Earlier written communication had
used pictographs, or picture symbols
 Writers could combine multiple
symbols to express more complex
ideas.
 First used to keep business records
 Scribes, or writers, were hired by
people, government, and temples
to keep track of items traded.
 Wrote works on history, law,
grammar, and math
 Wrote stories, proverbs, songs,
poems, and epics, long poems that
tell the stories of heroes
Gilgamesh
“O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.
Roof it over like the Apsu.
I understood and spoke to my lord, Ea:
'My lord, thus is the command which you have uttered
I will heed and will do it.” -Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI
 The first true Epic
 Story of a King named Gilgamesh
 2/3 god, 1/3 man
 Sought immortality after the death
of his friend
 Failed the test
 Flood Myth Connection
 Akkadian society developed just north of Sumer,
and for many years they lived in peace
 Sargon 1st
 The first King to unify the Mesopotamian city-states was
Sargon 1st
 Akkad was his Capitol
 Sargon created the “first world empire”.
 In 2300s BC the rule of Akkadia, Sargon I, sought to extend
Akkadian territory
 Launched a series of wars against neighboring
kingdoms
 First ruler with a permanent army
 Defeated all the city-states of Sumer and conquered
northern Mesopotamia
 Established world’s first empire, or land with different
territories and peoples under a single rule
 After Sargon died Empire fell apart
 Ur rebuilt and conquered Mesopotamia
 Political stability restored
 Sumerians again the most powerful civilization in
the region
 Math
 Developed math system based on the number 60
 Divided a circle into 360 degrees
 Divided a year into 12 months
 Calculated areas of rectangles and triangles
 Science and Medicine
 Studied the natural world
 Wrote long lists of names of animals, plants, and minerals
 Produced many healing drugs
 Catalogued medical knowledge, listing treatments
 Babylon was located on the Euphrates
near what is now Baghdad, Iraq
 Had once been a Sumerian city
 By 1800 BC it was home to a powerful
government of its own
 In 1792 BC Hammurabi became
Babylon’s king
 Would become the city’s greatest ruler
 Great military commander
 His most important accomplishment was
Hammurabi’s Code
 Set of 282 laws that dealt with almost
every part of daily life
 Some ideas in the Code are still found
in laws today
 Each crime brought a specific penalty.
 Different social classes required
different penalties
 Written down for all to see
 22. If any one is committing a robbery
and is caught, then he shall be put to
death.
 137. If a man wish to separate from a
woman who has borne him children, or
from his wife who has borne him
children: then he shall give that wife her
dowry, and a part of the usufruct of
field, garden, and property, so that she
can rear her children. When she has
brought up her children, a portion of all
that is given to the children, equal as
that of one son, shall be given to her.
She may then marry the man of her
heart.
 195. If a son strike his father, his hands
shall be hewn off.
 196. If a man put out the eye of another
man, his eye shall be put out.
 197. If he break another man's bone, his
bone shall be broken.
 229. If a builder build a house for some
one, and does not construct it properly,
and the house which he built fall in and
kill its owner, then that builder shall be
put to death.
 230. If it kill the son of the owner the
son of that builder shall be put to death.
 231. If it kill a slave of the owner, then
he shall pay slave for slave to the owner
of the house.
 Hittites
 Built a strong kingdom in Asia Minor.
 First to master ironworking
 Skillfully used chariot, a wheeled, horse-drawn cart used in
battle
 Captured Babylon around 1595 BC
 Kassites
 People from the north
 Ruled for almost 400 years after the Hittites
 Assyrians
 From northern Mesopotamia
 Briefly gained control of Babylon in 1200s BC, but soon
defeated
 About 900 BC began to conquer all of Fertile Crescent
 Had Strong armies, heavy taxes, harsh laws
 Extremely harsh rulers used fear to control populations
 Ruled through local leaders
 Chaldeans
 Nebuchadnezzar
 Rebuilt the city of Babylon
 Known for creating the hanging gardens
 Also known for building the Ishtar's Gate
• “Purple People”
• Lived on the Mediterranean Sea (at present-day
Lebanon.)
• Phoenicia traded all over the Mediterranean Sea, buying & selling
• Expert sailors who dominated Mediterranean Sea trade
• They traded with Greece, Egypt, Italy, Sicily, Spain, British Isles, &
as far south as the coast of the Atlantic in Africa
• Items traded included,
• They set up colonies such as Carthage on the north coast of
Africa
• One of their large cities was Tyre, famous for its purple
dyes
• They collected snails & made purple dye for cloth for
royalty
• The purple came fro the glands of thousands of snail glands
• Also learned glass-blowing
• They kept accounts of purchases, by developing an
alphabet using 22 symbols that could make countless
numbers of words using the idea of phonics.
• Greeks and Romans would add letters to form our alphabet to
become our of 26 letters
Also traded
silverwork, ivory
carvings, and
slaves
-Wealthy trading society
-Based mostly on
plentiful cedar lumber
Developed one of
the world’s first
alphabets, a set
of letters that can
be combined to
form words