![]() They probably developed around the same time, so let's just say it was a tie!īut the Sumerians get the credit for inventing the wheel! This idea grew out of a wheel they used for making pottery and evolved into wheels for carts and such. Historians are not sure if the Sumerians or Egyptians should be credited with “inventing” writing. However, later on, they began to use letters to stand for sounds as our language does today. The writing was similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics at first, as it used pictures to stand for words. It was made by pressing a wedge-shaped tool into clay tablets. The Sumerians invented a way of writing called cuneiform. They were very fond of a precious stone called lapis lazuli, which they used for art and jewelry and would go a long way to get! They did not have a lot of timber (wood that's good for building) or gemstones in Sumer, so they traveled to places where they could get them. The Sumerians traded goods with the people of the Indus Valley (in India), with the Egyptians, and possibly with Africa. ![]() They built temples that looked like flat-topped pyramids with steps on the outside to reach the top. Like the Egyptians, the Sumerians also built huge temples for their gods. (These are called city-states.) You can probably guess from this that the city-states were often at war with each other. Instead, each city was its own little kingdom with its own ruler. They didn't have one ruler over all, like the Egyptians had the pharaoh. They might have as many as 80,000 people living in a city. Unlike the early Egyptians, who lived mostly in small farming villages, the people of Sumer mainly lived in these cities. They built several great cities with names like Uruk, Eridu, and Nippur. Over the years, a civilization we call Sumer developed. This particular river valley was perfect for growing crops, and the wandering peoples of the area settled down here and started little villages that grew into bigger cities. ![]() If you've studied ancient history before, you know that civilizations often arose in river valleys. Image by Goran tek-en, via Wikimedia Commons, is licensed under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.Īs you can see, the land called Mesopotamia was the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in the area that we now call Iraq). The word Mesopotamia means “the land between two rivers.” Which two rivers are we talking about? Let's take a look at the map. The ancient Sumerians built a great civilization in the land called Mesopotamia. ![]()
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