Ruben+Meso+Page

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__**Location**__

**__Geography__** __**Economy/Culture**__ **__Time period__** __**Environmental challenges**__ __**War/Military/Defenses**__ __**Institutions**__ __**Religion**__ __**Architecture**__ **__Literature__** **__Social classes__** **__Equility__** **__Technology__** __**Important people**__ __**Government**__
 * Beetween the Persian Gulf and the Mediterainean Sea
 * modern day Iraq
 * In beetween Tigris and Euphrates rivers
 * Curved shape
 * Flat swamp land
 * Rich soil
 * Desert climate
 * Mesopotamie means land between to rivers
 * Traded grain and cloth and recieved raw materials such as stone wood and metal
 * Grew whaet and barley
 * through tade ideas got cultural diffusion
 * Around 4500 B.C. people and villages started to form
 * Unpredictable flooding
 * natural resources were limited
 * Little rain = desert like climates
 * No natural barriers
 * Not alot of building materials
 * Need water for crops
 * Built irragation ditches for crops to get watered
 * Built city walls
 * Constant war between the city states
 * Hard to defend the city states becuase they didnt have any natural resources
 * The men pick a leader in times of war
 * City states were independant and self governing
 * The city included its surrounding land
 * Empire:Independant countries/ city states brought under one ruler
 * Polythesism:believed in more than one god
 * Gods controlled nature
 * What happens after death? They believed you went to a hell type place after you died no matter what you did in life
 * They gave offerings to their Gods
 * Ziggerat: a multi level structure wich was the center of most city states it included [[image:Ziggurat-sml.jpg caption="Ziggurat" link="RubenD"]]
 * Bazar/ market place
 * Ziggerrat center of mesopotamian cuture
 * Arshes
 * Ramps
 * Collums
 * Pyrimaids
 * __Epic of gildamesh__
 * Gave us information about how they might have lived
 * Epic of Gildamesh was a story similar to __Noah's Ark__
 * Top Layer: Kings and Priests
 * Next layer: Wealthy merchants and Land holders
 * 3rd layer: Ordinary people who worked in the fields or in shops
 * Lowest layer: Slaves (Dept or prisoner of war)
 * Women could be merchants, farmers or merchants
 * Women could own propertywomen could become preists
 * some upper clases people got to learn how to read and write
 * Inventions: the wheel, the plow and the sail
 * they used math to build things
 * Arethmetic & geomotry had a base 60
 * Architecture
 * Cuneiform: thier style of writing
 * Sargon conquered sumer and spread culture
 * Hammurabi leader of babylonian empire (the code of hammurabi)
 * Controlled by preist at first
 * During times of war people chose a strong tough fighter to lead at first thier control ended after the war was over after time when city states were at constant war the just remained in control and then thats how dynasties started
 * They went by hammurabis code of law