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Mesopotamia’s Great Achievements
The early land of Mesopotamia had many great achievements that have shaped the way our lives are today. The Mesopotamians created grand cities and introduced many of the basic ideas we use today such as civilized language. Many of these people’s achievements will be in this project but it is impossible to chart all their achievements because we are still uncovering their old artifacts to this day. Mesopotamia or “The land between two rivers” or now Iraq is the cradle of civilization and the place of our ancestors and the place where we made many great discoveries.
One of the very first achievements made by the Mesopotamians, or Sumerians was their very own writing system. Called cuneiform, the writing system included numbers as well as words. Called “word pictures”, this writing system was performed on a tablet of clay with a pointed instrument called a stylus. Although many of the people of Mesopotamia did not no how to write properly they got by using marks to represent different situations. After all, the reason why the Sumerians needed writing was to keep track of business records while they were trading. The only people who learned cuneiform completely where men called scribes. Scribes wrote the information down at request and they recorded most of the important records. Mesopotamia quickly flourished and the first real civilization was created.
Shortly after numbers and cuneiform were created, math followed opening up lots of opportunities for further careers. Math shaped the way people think and architecture for buildings improved. Pretty soon the Sumerians found ways to relate to and improve almost anything. The creation of math helped the people to figure out problems that they had earlier on that they wouldn’t have known how to solve. Math developed over the years into what it is today but most of the early improvements of it started when math was just numbers. With math more and more minor and major discoveries could be made!
The next achievement in line is currency. The currency evolved from clay symbols to represent trade to silver coils called “hat money”. This hat money and it’s value varied from how big it was and different names were made for the different money values. For example today we have the penny, and the dime, and the nickel etc. which all have a different value. The development of currency in Mesopotamia greatly increased the peoples wealth and because of that many other developments were created and improved. This is why currency is such an important achievement for the Mesopotamians.
Another great step for the Sumerians or Mesopotamians was the wheel. With currency the Sumerians found that trade had greatly increased. Orders from neighboring city-states far away needed to be met. At first the Sumerians would drag the supplies through the land on boxes. This was slow work so the traders decided to put logs under the cart and roll it over them. Once the back log came out they would bring it to the front and keep repeating this cycle. Finally somebody got the great idea of attaching the logs to the cart. This was the first wheel which was continuously developed until it is what it is today. Trade and transportation for goods was much easier and once again trade increased.
Throughout the years the Sumerians got more and more inventive all the time. Many more inventions were made by them throughout the years but this is all my project covers. The Mesopotamians shaped the way our lives are today and we are all descendants of them. I hope you enjoyed my project and found it interesting because these are some of the first inventions the Mesopotamians or Sumerians made!
Posted by 23282 on 1/19/07; 11:49:02 AM
from the Patrick dept.
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