RIVER VALLEY CIVILIZATIONS: MESOPOTAMIA AND EGYPT

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Cultural Hearths

Historians specialized in the identification of Cultural Hearths, the areas where civilizations first began that radiated the ideas, innovations, and ideologies that culturally transformed the world.

http://www.harpercollege.edu/mhealy/g101ilec/china/chh/hea/chhheafr.htm

Graphic organizer River valley Civilizations

Features Geography/ Location Political Economics Religion Social Order Achievements Legacy Mesopotamia Egypt India China

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

These are the building blocks of human civilizations

The most noteworthy achievements of the earliest civilizations were the earliest versions of organizational and cultural forms that most of us take for granted:
Writing Formal

codes of law City planning and architecture Institutions of trade-use of money

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

This civilization originated in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in a part of the Middle East called Mesopotamia

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

Mesopotamia was one of the few cases of a civilization that started from scratch.

There were no examples from any place available for imitation.

Mesopotamia progressed mostly due to the accomplishments of the Sumerians, the most influential people in the Tigris-Euphrates region.

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Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

3500 B.C.ESumerians had developed the first known human writing, cuneiform. They also were characterized by the development of astronomical sciences, intense religious beliefs, and tightly organized city states.

Deciphering Cuneiform

Cuneiform Writing

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

Sumerians improved the regions agricultural prosperity by learning about fertilizer and using silver to conduct commercial exchange. Their ideas about divine forces in natural objects were common among early agricultural peoples.

Polytheism-A religion which sees many gods in aspects of nature

Sumerians had a complex religious system where each patron had a shrine to please and honor various deities.

Ziggurats

The creationism story of the Sumerians later influenced the writers of the Old Testament.

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

Sumerian political structures stressed tightly organized city-states, ruled by a king of claimed divine authority (theocracy)
Example

of how a civilization and political structures combined.

The government helped regulate religion and enforces its duties

Provided

a system of courts for justice

Tigris-Euphrates Civilization

Kings were originally war leaders

Function

of defense and war Leader/trainer of the army

Sumerians were eventually conquered in 2500 B.C.E by the Akkadians who continued the Sumerian culture The Babylonians who developed Hammurabis code conquered the Akkadians in 2000 B.C.E..

Hammurabis Code

Hammurabi, the Judge

Hammurabis Code

King Hammurabi introduced the most famous and first code of law. It laid down the procedure for law courts and regulated property rights and duties of family members, setting harsh punishments for crimes. It had a system of double standards (interpretation of law was different based upon gender) This focus on standardizing a legal system was one of the features of early river valley

If a man stole the property of church or state, that man shall be put to death; also the one who received the stolen goods from his hand shall be put to death.

The laws governed such things as lying, stealing, assault, debt, business partnerships, marriage, and divorce. In seeking protection for all members of Babylonian society, Hammurabi relied on the philosophy of equal retaliation, otherwise known as an eye for an eye.

Code of Hammurabi

If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death. If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was robbed claim under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community, and . . . on whose ground and territory and in whose domain it was compensate him for the goods stolen. If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes to put it out cast his eye upon the property of the owner of the house, and take the property of the master of the house, he shall be thrown into that self-same fire.

Babylonian Math

Babylonian Numbers