* A term referring to locations identified as the sites of the emergence of civilization * Civilization is an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached. *
Mesopotamia: Cradle of Civilization
* The name Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning “between the rivers.” * located in a region that included parts of what is now eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and most of Iraq, lay between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates * Why Mesopotamia? * Several civilizations flourished in the region. * Mesopotamia is generally credited with being the first place where civilized societies truly began to take shape. People around the world had been developing the groundwork for civilization for millennia: Agriculture was established around 8000 B.C. The domestication of animals for labor and food developed simultaneously. People had been creating art for thousands of years already. Early laws had been established in the form of mores and folkways. All of these were parts of human culture, but not civilization. Mesopotamians refined, added to and formalized these systems, combining them to form a civilization * Mesopotamia was a land of lush vegetation, abundant wildlife, & copious water resources. By 6000 B.C., many people migrated from neighboring areas into its water rich land where the Tigers meet Euphrates in the South.. * The convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers produced rich fertile soil and a supply of water for irrigation. The civilizations that emerged around these rivers are among the earliest known non-nomadic agrarian societies. * Because Ubaid,Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon civilizations all emerged around the Tigris-Euphrates, the theory that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization is widely accepted. *
Sumerians
-The civilized life emerged in Sumer was shaped by the unpredictable devastating