Early Civilization

While I was gone the other day, the class was introduced to the new lesson about Prehistory to Civilization today. I'll start off with saying that the earliest prehistoric age is the Paleolithic age and the Neolithic was when people started to invent tools and start farming. Humans originally emerged from southwestern Africa and travelled in groups hunting and gathering plants. The Neolithic age also evolved into permanent settlements and moved around to Southwestern Asia. At this time inventions were increasing as the status of women was decreasing because they were only good for house duties apparently. then we got into the subject of Mesopotamia. a district called Sumer took up the land in between the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates and inhabited 40,000 people. Governments were formed for the very first time like the concept of the city-state and the first writings called cuneiforms were formed. Gods and Goddesses of nature were formed along with tall tales of epics like "Epic of Gilgamesh" which talked about a huge flood that wiped out man kind. Sumerians were some of the first people to develop time and calendars according to the moon cycles. They also built high temples to praise their gods and goddesses and a pretty famous one is called the Ziggurat. The nomad people drove animals with them in their travels like in the south of Sumer of Arabia. Then King Hammurabi of Babylon created one of the first real set of rules called Hammurabi's code for people in different settlements. Basically they all circled around the saying of you back what you dish out like an eye for an eye. Mesopotamia was increasingly expanding across the land of Europe and Asia in tribes such as the Indo-Europeans who ventured to Russia's steppe and introduced the domestic horse. Our first test is Wednesday on this material and I really hope we review for it.