All right, time travelers, buckle up.
It's time for the brain blaster challenge. Today,
we're diving headfirst into a mystery that's been waiting for us for thousands
of years. Here's the puzzle, folks:
You see these four images?
There's a secret link hidden between them.
Can you figure out what that is?
Time's up.
Got your answer? Boom! You got it.
It's the wheel.
One of humanity's most revolutionary inventions. And guess what?
This simple,
but game-changing invention is just one from a civilization that was an
absolute powerhouse of ideas. Sumer.
Now, let's roll back in time and discover the wonders of this amazing place.
Let's go, historians.
Before we wheel out today's lesson, let's look at our objectives.
We'll describe the primary advancements of Sumer,
including their political, religious, cultural,
economic, and technological achievements. And, as we go,
we'll explain how those advancements affected later civilizations.
Are you ready, historians?
Let's dig into the details of Sumerian society, starting with,
you guessed it, government.
What kind of leaders and laws do you reckon they had back then in Sumer?
Let's see if you're right. Picture this.
Sumer was made up of a bunch of city-states,
kind of like mini countries, each with its own boss and rules.
Imagine each city state running its own show with its own laws, economy,
and soldiers. Cool, right? And here's the kicker.
These bosses, the kings,
were believed to be handpicked by the gods.
This tied government and religion together.
They would even have artwork and epic stories made portraying them as God-like
heroes. These kings ran the show,
but they were helped by a big team of people called bureaucrats who
did most of the work.
These folks made sure everything in the city-state ran smoother than a chariot
ride on a new Sumerian road.
And these bureaucrats weren't just desk workers and managers,
a bunch of them traveled far and wide to talk to people in other city states,
trading goods and making peace treaties,
But, just in case, to keep the city safe,
each city state had its own army ready to defend its home turf.
Here's the best part:
These ways of running things influenced other civilizations
for centuries. Many of Sumer's ideas on governments,
even though they've been tweaked, are still in use today.
We said earlier that Sumerian kings were also religious leaders and were helped
by priests. Together,
they led religious rituals and ceremonies to honor the gods.
Now imagine having not just one or even two,
but a whole bunch of gods to pray to.
That's what being polytheistic means.
The worship of more than one god.
And most Sumerian gods represented forces of nature.
Take Enlil, for example. He was in charge of the wind and storms.
He also controlled the rain, which makes him pretty important
if you are a farmer hoping for a good crop.
Wanna learn more about Sumerian gods? Then be sure to check out the PDF.
Since these gods ruled forces which were important in the lives of Sumerians,
they were usually included in prayers for nice weather and good harvests.
Honoring the gods that controlled their crops
made people feel like they were in control of their own destiny.
Polytheism wasn't just a Mesopotamian thing either.
Having many gods was the norm for most,
but not all, early civilizations,
Sumerians also believed in an afterlife,
but to them it was a dark and gloomy place,
which made life on Earth even more important.
Now, where did they worship these gods? At Ziggurats.
These were giant temples that were the heart of the town.
Hmm... kinda looks familiar, huh?
Picture this: a huge building where people went to pray, and
around it they could also meet friends and even do a little shopping.
It was kind of like the ancient version of a mall.
The Sumerians believed in showing their gods some love by giving them presents.
These weren't like birthday gifts, though.
They offered animals, food, and drinks to win their God's blessing.
And here's a neat fact to wrap things up:
the Sumerians' way of worship influenced many later civilizations who
also prayed to multiple gods at grand temples led by priests.
So, you could say the Sumerians were trendsetters.
One of the biggest cultural achievements was cuneiform,
a system of writing where little pictures were etched into clay tablets.
Here's a question for you: What is so important about a system of writing?
Pause here to respond.
Among other things, cuneiform
let Sumerians write down their laws in government documents and made it easier
to communicate between different groups. They can write down their history too.
I mean, just imagine trying to build a ziggurat without a plan written down.
How would thousands of workers know what to do or where to go?
How would the people in charge stay organized?
Even though several city-states had their own spoken language,
cuneiform was a consistent form of communication across the land.
Imagine people being grouped by their jobs. That's what happened in Sumer.
A social structure based on jobs developed in the region. At the top were the
ruling elite, which was made up of kings, priests, nobles,
and high ranking officials.
This group is the one that was in charge of everything in Sumer.
Below them were commoners. These folks were divided into several levels,
including soldiers, merchants, and skilled workers.
And below them were farmers. These people protected the city,
owned and operated markets,
made things, such as pottery and jewelry, and provided food to everyone,
important jobs for sure.
And at the very bottom were enslaved peoples who were usually
prisoners of war or people who had been sold into slavery to pay off debts.
Gender played a big role in Sumerian society.
Men had most of the power,
and women were usually limited to supporting their families at home.
This was common for future civilizations too.
Sumer served as a model civilization for others, as writing was later
created in other civilizations as a way to communicate. And, social classes
like those in Sumer became the norm. I mean, it worked well for Sumer,
why reinvent the wheel? Right?
Specialization led to all sorts of jobs, like you saw in the social classes, as
people tried to make their lives better based on their skills.
Those jobs also included fishermen, scribes, and artisans,
or skilled crafts makers, like potters.
Sumer had a massive trade network that allowed them to swap goods with other
civilizations, too. They traded
things had a lot of, like wheat and precious metals, for goods that were more
scarce, like timber.
Sumerians were the first people to create a system of banking using clay
tablets to record the transactions. Cool, huh?
They also used weights and measures to make sure trade was fair,
but each city-state had its own system.
Sumerians collected taxes from people, then used the money to pay for public
projects, such as irrigation systems and ziggurats.
A bunch of economic advancements from Sumer were later copied by other
civilizations: specialization, trade, banking,
taxes...Just be careful asking your parents about that last one.
Hey, so far do you see some similarities between Sumer and where you live?
Take a moment to jot a few down.
Some of the biggest developments in Sumer involved technology and new inventions.
One that helped farmers was the plow,
which broke up the soil and made planting crops much easier.
Advances in math were important for a bunch of reasons. Now,
you've already heard that Sumerians used math for both banking and measurements.
What else might they have used math for?
Well, the Sumerians came up with a number system based on 60.
This helped with an early system for measuring time. Think about it:
60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute... Yeah!
Sumer did that.
And they used math for measuring angles.
Sumerians were able to measure the properties of different shapes,
which really helped them with architecture and building things.
They also used their math skills to measure land and long distances,
and that made travel and trade a lot better.
And here's one that changed transportation and trade forever:
that sailboat! It let them easily move goods upstream,
which before had been really tough, and it meant people,
goods, and ideas could move faster and farther than ever before.
And I'm sure you remember that the wheel was invented by Sumer.
It was used on carts and wagons pulled by animals,
or sometimes even people, to move stuff a whole lot more than people could
carry in their arms.
They used pottery wheels to make clay pots and made mills and used mill
stones to grind grain into flour.
All of these were used and improved upon by later civilizations.
Now, keep in mind, all these things didn't happen overnight.
It took hundreds and hundreds of years for Sumer to come up with all these things,
but good thing they did.
These were huge ideas and inventions, not just in Sumer,
but for later civilizations all around the world.
These ideas and others were copied and modified by people for centuries.
Next time,
we'll check out another civilization in Mesopotamia that used the Sumerians' ideas
and inventions and then added a bunch of their own. Until then,
historians keep uncovering the past and looking to the future.
And remember to always be clever.