UNIT REFLECTIONMESOPOTAMIA: THE FERTILE CRESCENT
1. In 2-3 sentences for each topic, summarize what you learned about the following:
a) The domestication of plants and animals:
Firstly, I learned that domestication means to tame/control/make plants+animals more useful to humans, it determines where they live, die and eat.
The most interesting fact that I learned about domestication of plants and animals during this unit was that domestication came after humans started settling in villages, or cities. Another interesting fact was learning about domestication of plants and animals in Catal Huyuk- stable, consistent and it included a reliable diet. They also had the surplus of food which resulted in the food being stored.
b) The transition from hunter-gatherer communities to the first civilizations:
Humans back then were traveling quite a lot for a short amount of time to follow their food-animals. Over the years when time passed by, they started settling in places for a long period of time, and that was happening in the fertile crescent. That's when everything was becoming more advanced, and that's when civilization existed. HOWEVER, Hunter gatherers DIDN'T have a civilization before, they didn't always have a stable food supply, and they didn't develop much specialization of labor.
c) Early religion and beliefs
This was the most interesting topic to me. Religion and Gods was much more different in earlier days than today. In ancient times, people believed in many Gods and Goddesses, I think of their Gods as mayors and presidents today. Gods back then ruled and protected regions, they also do that today, but in a different manner. However, we also have Gods who we believe in. Some of the people have a different religion in which they are not allowed to believe in a God. But that's in the present days.
2. Imagine someone saying to you, "Learning about the Sumerians isn't very important since they're long gone!" What would you tell them in order to change their mind?
The Sumerians were very successful in many ways, and are very important for many different reasons.
Firstly, I think that their education, communication was very high- their system of writing was called Cunieform, which included pictographs for record-keeping. However later the Phoenicians created their own script which was the alphabet, and I won't go on to that right now. Secondly, I think that their technology is amazing, without their inventions of valuable tools, our lives today would be very different. They created sails (wind power), plows (harnessing animals power) and the wheel (science power), and all that resulted in TRADE. I also thought that their religion and government was excellent too. The priests were very powerful, and they controlled city states, their kingship developed, they had taxes and sacrifices, also the rise of conflicts and wars occurred. The Sumerians had strong army leaders who began to rise to power.
All in all, the Sumerians were not even close to not important. I think that everything they invented is great, I mean imagine taking risks and doing all the things that they did. Creating symbols like Cunieform writing? I don't think anyone could do that now a days.
This is a picture of Enheduana.
This is how cuneiform writing looked like.
