Friday, January 23, 2015

January 23, 2015: Class

Today we took notes in class.

Mesopotamia
- A pantheon of Sumerian Gods and Goddesses emerged, with many of the deities representing the natural elements of the world.
- The world's first (surviving) epic was the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh" which told of a great flood
- Sumerians first divided the hour into sixty minutes and the minute into sixty seconds; They also organized a calendar based on moon cycles
- The Ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a "mountain" of earth

Civilization in Mesopotamia
- Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially in the south of Sumer in Arabia
- King Hammurabi of Babylon created a series of laws known as "Hammurabi's Code" - Laws that included "An eye for an eye" and regulations of marriage, divorce, and punishments for all sorts of crimes

The Expansion of Mesopotamia Civilization
- Indo-Europeans were people from the grasslands of the Russian steppe who introduced the horse to the near east
- The warlike Indo-European tribe known as the Hittities settled in Asia minor
- The Hittities had a lucrative trade in metals and conquered nearly all of their neighbors, even threatening Egypt

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