Unit Level 1 Lecture 2 Rise of Civilization Mesopotamia

welcome back to our lecture two for unit level one discussion on the origins of Agriculture culture and civilization today's lecture we'll be focusing on the rise of the civilizations in Mesopotamia here we'll be looking at what it makes or what it takes to make civilization the area known as Mesopotamia and little bit about culture of one of those civilizations in the Mesopotamia region while you're watching this lecture please make sure that you put away all your distractions including cell phones TV game systems and things like that and while you are working on this lecture please make sure you have your lecture to worksheet out and are working on it if you don't have the worksheet remember you can always click on and print it off from here or just simply take some notes down it's better than having nothing remember that during the video you are encouraged to use the pause button if you needed in order to get all the information please make sure you are listening to the entire lesson not just the several items that are not just the items that are popping up on the screen but everything because there are parts and things that I'm going to talk about that are not in the notes but you are still expected to know now that all the reminders are done let's get started setting the stage how big of deal was agriculture do you think well how many people do you think like to eat without agriculture people would have to continue to be hunter gatherers people would have to roam the area looking for food however remember that once people realize the benefits of tending their own crops people were able to stay in the one place and have surplus of food thereby allowing for their population to expand once people start Ed staying put their dwellings began to get larger and the areas began to become more organized communities as population increased cities gradually grew and as the cities grew there was less of need for everyone to be involved in agriculture economics began to matter people began to understand the value of work and trade as more people were able to be fed more and more people began staying in one place these small villages would eventually grow into sustainable cities farming became easier due to advances in technology and the domestication of animals the domestication of animals simply refers to the ability of people able or being able to keep animals round up as at home or right outside their homes kind of like cattle because of the use of vager culture bigger harvests were result from new and better Technologies like hand tools it is fact that the more people or sorry the more food you have in Supply the bigger the population that can be supported the more food there are or the more food there is the more people they'll be as cities grew so did the responsibilities of those who lived there not everyone needed to farm one farmer could create enough food for maybe 10 people there was no point to having so much food the technology of the wheel and the sail allowed for trade to occur over long distances we'll talk more about this later this was time for any type of money was currency no coin no bills nothing like that the economy was mostly type of barter system which is what they were using and As Cities grew social classes began to emerge those people that were considered better than others based upon what they had or could sell would be Prov would be considered at the higher levels of Society compared to other people who may not have that same type of opportunity or ability we also would see that religion would be would begin to become more organized as well based on findings people began to Worship in large groups at specific location rather than smaller groups at their own homes or very small tent areas they actually started to get together with people of other similar religious beliefs and worship together as group so how civilization develops you might ask well civilizations are complex form of culture that consists of five specific characteristics first every civilization consists of some sort of an advanced City the size of an area doesn't distinguish city from village you can have small area of land that is considered city the opposite can also be true where large area of land does not necessarily mean it can't be village you see lot of villages when you get out of the main cities like farming areas today for example hundreds and hundreds of square miles but it's all still only part of smaller Comm Community or Village not too many people there but it's very large area the size of the region does not necessarily mean that it's city one of the key parts to having an advanced city is that it must also be center for trade the buying and selling of goods and our services this creates an economy within the area for the people to live here and make money cuz it's all about the money of course next part of civilization is that it needs to have specialized workers specialization is the development of skills of specific type of work an example might be someone who is good at making tools and turns that into profession not everyone might be good good at making tools back in the day so they would rely on those few who did it really well one specific type of specialized worker might be an artisan these people were skilled workers who make things with their hands an example of an artisan might be painter sculptor or just builder although it doesn't seem that important in regards to the big pictures and how civilization might function artists are what makes civilization unique you can learn lot about civilization just by looking at their artistic Creations the third characteristic of civilization is its complex institutions an institution is longlasting pattern of organization in commun in community things that have been there for long time that help ident identify what was important to that culture or Society can you think of anything in our culture that's been around for very long time that's in very that is very important for our society today some examples of an American institution might include our government our ability to practice religion and the economy or our idea of capitalism these things have been around for very long time and helped to Define to other others what it means to be member of our American civilization recordkeeping is also an intricate part of civilization included with recordkeeping you have taxes being collected laws being passed and the storage of grain or other similar items around 3000 BCE which stands for before current ERA scribes or professional record Keepers invented writing system called uniform if you look on page 21 in your textbook you can see an example of uniform it's Al simply wedge wedge that's pushed into soft wet clay to make symbols they would use this type of writing to keep records to communicate and keep track of the different things they need to keep track of did somebody pay taxes how much grain was produced during this Harvest which person took this much grain from the storage it's important to keep track of these things because if somebody takes more grain than they're supposed to and if it's not recorded they're going to have short on grain for everybody else so recordkeeping even today is extremely important finally you need to have some form of advanced technology this is the last piece to be considered on whether your culture is actually civilized okay an example of an advanced technology might simply include plows pottery wheels or the using of bronze in the creation of tools and weapons although these items seem very basic insignificant by today's standards even today there needs to be some form of advanced technology in order for an area to be considered civilized earlier mentioned something called bronze bronze is simply copper and Tin that had been melted together and you get whole new substance called bronze bronze is very malleable bendable and easy to work with it is soft metal but considering what the op options were before it is very effective in making the tools that they needed for their Agriculture and weapons now that we have the basics of what it takes to be considered civilization let's focus now on the first known civilizations the first civilization occurred in an area known as Mesopotamia today we we also know it as the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia ran from the Mediterranean Sea in the west followed the rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris and ended up Southeast into the Persian Gulf area today you will find that almost all civilizations existed next to or near some sort of water or fresh water supply this was because water is needed to survive as well as to produce and provide the opportunity for travel and trade with others let's take take an even closer look at this region let's look at the region of Mesopotamia and its geography most of Mesopotamia is located in present day Iraq it also spreads West into the modern-day countries of Syria Lebanon and Israel because of how the rivers flow and the foliage of the land the curved shape has leted Scholars to call it the Fertile Crescent fertile meaning that it's able to produce lot of Agriculture and Crescent simply referring to the fact that it's kind of an arc think of like crescent moon as mentioned earlier The Tigress in the Euphrates river runs through the region and provides water and transportation one of the most interesting parts of the river is that when it would flood it would do it unpredictably after the water would recede or away it left thick layer of mineral called silt silt is great for agriculture it's full of minerals that allow different types of agricultural products to grow very productively the problem though is it was like said unpredictable sometimes it would not flood causing desert-like conditions the solution used by the people would be irrigation or the moving of water from one place to another they would literally dig ditches from the rivers away from them into their fields where they were producing their crops for their agriculture so they had to improvise if they did not have flooding in particular year the region of Mesopotamia was generally flat and didn't provide any real natural barriers for protection from outside Warriors or sometimes even the weather the solution for this was they actually ended up building walls around their cities makes sense right and finally because natural resources were scarce those that lived in the region relied on trade to get any Goods or things that they needed but were not able to be grown or created in their own area so they relied on trade with other areas one of the early successful civilizations that we know of was the area known as sumar here we see it existed in the southern area of what is Mesopotamia and it lasted from about 3,200 BCE and up until about 2360 BCE the people that lived in the region of suar were known as samarians makes sense right the samarians exemplified the five characteristics required to have civilization the samarians were group of people that had developed city states which are cities that functioned like independent countries but were as small as cities they were independent from other cities around them they would have their own leaders their own set of rules and laws they would be independent cities from one another even though these cities might be somewhat near each other early on government was controlled by temple priest or type of religious leader these religious leaders would have their central government in what was called zigurat which is simply place of worship it would be like their Town Hall the people would organize at the Town Hall they would worship they would talk about the concerns of the city so it had multiple functions sometimes depending on which city state you lived in military leader would become ruler and passes power to his son or other relatives upon his death When leaders pass on their leadership to family member the family becomes part of dynasty dynasty is simply series of rulers that came from the same family because these city states were so close to each other people from different areas would mingle and trade ideas this is known as cultural defusion or the spreading of ideas or products from one culture to another through conquest or trade excuse me this is what zigurat looked like tall structure that acted as the center of town as well as the religious center for the city it's kind of like the city hall let's take an even deeper look at the Samaran culture just for moment samarians were polytheistic which means that they believed in more than one God part of that belief was that when you die you would go to the land of no return as they called it which was dismal and gloomy place apparently as we see that throughout the year with most civilizations the samarians had social classes the hierarchy of power based upon your status in the city for example on the bottom as you can see with the picture here the slaves were the lowest part of society but there was more of them than anybody as compared to the top of the pyramid we'd have Kings and legislators and Priests there were lot fewer of them but they had all of the Power lot of that even continues on today in lot of societies around the world this type of pyramid hierarchial system one interesting thing about samarians was the way that they treated their women women actually had more rights than that of lot of later civilizations one example is that women were able to get an inheritance and had the ability to own their own land one of the first cities we're going to spend little bit of time talking about is the city of which is another one of those small city states it flourished about 5,000 years ago and had reached population of about 30,000 people they had built up walls to protect them from other city states who were looking to take their land they used trading system known as the barter system where instead of trading for money they would trade for goods or services so if you have some let's say some wheat to sell and have some goats that don't need might offer you hey you can have my two goats for two bushels of two bushels of wheat they would trade product for product that's known as barter system they would also practice religion and worship at the zigurat at the center of the city which we kind of talked about talked about earlier here we see in the southern region of present day Iraq as you can see it was located right next to the Euphrates river which is still there today this is an artist's idea of what might have looked like they had centralized area protected by walls with the zigurat inside as well outside the walls you can see smaller dwellings and homes and shops as well it was usually those people on the top part of that pyramid that would have the privilege of living within these tall buildings or Within These Walls you might also kind of see that there's kind of moat kind of around the area which served as another type of protective barrier to keep enemies at Bay if they would try to attack as with most ancient civilizations sumar ended up being conquered in 2350 BCE by guy by the name of Sargon of aade Sargon would eventually create the world's first Empire which is the bringing together of several peoples or Nations under the control of one ruler throughout our history we will talk about many different types of Empires throughout different parts of the world and how these different leaders were able to bring all these different groups from all these different regions together under one leadership one of these rulers would come from Babylon and go by the name of hamurabi he would create one of the first set of rules standard rules sorry for an Empire these set of rules would become known as hamar robi's code Hammurabi's Code was single uniform set of laws engraved in stone to help unify the diverse groups within his Empire and here we kind of see what that looked like this is sample of one of his what's known as Steels which is pillars where he wrote his laws on we're going to take some time later on to look at these laws and determine if they were actually Fair why they existed and were they effective we'll get to that in the next upcoming lessons though Mesopotamia would be the beginning of civilization it wasn't long until others began to take hold as well south and east of Mesopotamia new civilization was slowly evolving and be would become one of the most wellknown mysterious civilizations of all time wonder if you can guess what it was and with that we are finishing up our lecture on Mesopotamia and the creation of civilizations hope you enjoyed it looking forward we'll be looking into Egypt eventually but beforehand we're going to get little bit into talking about hamar robi's code and and this set of rules that he set up if you have any questions please feel free to let me know as always and feel free to go back to check out the video or any other type of resource you may need to help you fill in any extra blanks or to help further clarify anything you might not have completely understood so with that I'm done and as one of my favorite authors would always say at the end of his lessons stay awesome have great day