Meso+ERAT

Group names: Elyse Rosen, Tatyana Keshanech, Ryan Lawless, and Alyssa Winscom

Hey. It's Elyse and I'm going to start out with new political and military structures. -Government agreed to meet demands of the growing population and the armies started to gain more land and more power. -Sumerians battled Akkadians and eventually lost. -Later, Sumerians demanded their city-states back and got them. -scholars all agree that The Code of Hammurabi is completely fair. -Akkadians had a great military ruler in 2340 B.C. named Sargon. -Sargon took control over Sumer and built Akkadian empire over city-states and more. -Sargon didn't rule for long. -Mesopotamia had many rulers and also many laws. -The most widely known law is called The Code of Hammurabi. -The code states that if someone does something bad to someone else, they shall be punished harshly. -Hammurabi was a prince as well as a ruler.

Hey, It's Elyse again and I'm going to do the new forms of significant artistic and intellectual activity. -Weapons were one source of activity. It's used for wars. -Jewelry was a sign of what kind of money you had and also a form of artistic activity. -The ziggurat was a sign of both artistic and intellectual activity because it's how people show their respect for gods and the ziggurat points to the heavens for the gods. -Lastly, people used cuneiform to write. It was used to keep records for things that were important and also went out to be used for remembering legends or how things came to be. Ryan doing writing and food supply. WRITING: ☻The mesopoyamians invented a type of wirting called cuneiform ☻ they used this writing first to keep records for merchants ☻ cuneiform comes from the words wedge shaped created by the writing instrument they used ☻they wrote on clay tablets ☻they had cylinder seals that would identify a person like a signature ☻they would roll this in soft clay FOOD: ☻they used plows to help get the soil rich ☻used certain irrigation systems to get water in their crops ☻living right next to the tigres and the euphretes helped a lot for crops ☻invented new plows to help start growing their crops faster

~Tatyana URBAN FOCUS: -cities became centers of political, economic, social, cultural, and religious developement This was when the civilazation started to grow, and the people came up with new ways of making it better. They made a government, with laws and people who were classified to work for the government. They developed writing, which they called cuneiform, and they made gods and different religious rituals. NEW SOCIAL STRUCTURE BASED ON ECONOMIC POWER: ~Upper Class -priests -land owners -government officials ~Middle Class -merchants -craftspeople -farmers -fishers ~Lower Class -slaves Basically, upper class ruled most things and dominated. Middle class was average, still doing things for their civilization and helping themselves live. Lower class was just people that served on others, and weren't very important.