The work of Julia Harte, under funding from a National Geographic grant, explored the consequences of using such power on the history and people of the area. Innovations and advancements along the same lines of hydropower will continue to create an evolving landscape for local governments and people of the region. Also known as hydroelectricity or hydroelectric power. Regions are the basic units of geography. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
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It is a historic region of West Asia within the Tigris-Euphrates river system. In fact, the word Mesopotamia means "between rivers" in Greek. Home to the ancient civilizations of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia these peoples are credited with influencing mathematics and astronomy.
Use these classroom resources to help your students develop a better understanding of the cradle of civilization. The surrounding river basin has a population of more than four hundred million people. A river is a large, natural stream of flowing water. Rivers are found on every continent and on nearly every kind of land.
Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. Agricultural progress was the work of the dominant Ubaid culture, which had absorbed the Halaf culture before it. These scattered agrarian communities started in the northern part of the ancient Mesopotamian region and spread south, continuing to grow for several thousand years until forming what modern humans would recognize as cities, which were considered the work of the Sumer people.
Uruk was the first of these cities, dating back to around B. It was a mud brick metropolis built on the riches brought from trade and conquest and featured public art, gigantic columns and temples. At its peak, it had a population of some 50, citizens. Sumerians are also responsible for the earliest form of written language, cuneiform, with which they kept detailed clerical records.
By B. The first king of a united Sumer is recorded as Etana of Kish. Etana was followed by Meskiaggasher, the king of the city-state Uruk. A warrior named Lugalbanda took control around B. Gilgamesh is believed to have been born in Uruk around B.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be the earliest great work of literature and the inspiration for some of the stories in the Bible. In the epic poem, Gilgamesh goes on an adventure with a friend to the Cedar Forest, the land of the Gods in Mesopotamian mythology. When his friend is slain, Gilgamesh goes on a quest to discover the secret of eternal life, finding: "Life, which you look for, you will never find.
For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. The Akkadian Empire existed from B. He was at one point an officer who worked for the king of Kish, and Akkadia was a city that Sargon himself established. When the city of Uruk invaded Kish, Sargon took Kish from Uruk and was encouraged to continue with conquest. Sargon expanded his empire through military means, conquering all of Sumer and moving into what is now Syria. Under Sargon, trade beyond Mesopotamian borders grew, and architecture became more sophisticated, notably the appearance of ziggurats, flat-topped buildings with a pyramid shape and steps.
The final king of the Akkadian Empire, Shar-kali-sharri, died in B. Among these groups were the Gutian people, barbarians from the Zagros Mountains. In B. The ruler of Ur-Namma, the king of the city of Ur, brought Sumerians back into control after Utu-hengal, the leader of the city of Uruk, defeated the Gutians. Ur-Namma was attacked by both the Elamites and the Amorites and defeated in B. Choosing Babylon as the capital, the Amorites took control and established Babylonia.
Kings were considered deities and the most famous of these was Hammurabi , who ruled — B. Hammurabi worked to expand the empire, and the Babylonians were almost continually at war.
The list of laws also featured recommended punishments to ensure that every citizen had the right to the same justice. Together with the control of the Amorites, this conquest marked the end of Sumerian culture. Smelting was a significant contribution of the Hittites, allowing for more sophisticated weaponry that lead them to expand the empire even further.
Their attempts to keep the technology to themselves eventually failed, and other empires became a match for them. The Hittites pulled out shortly after sacking Babylon, and the Kassites took control of the city. Hailing from the mountains east of Mesopotamia, their period of rule saw immigrants from India and Europe arriving, and travel sped up thanks to the use of horses with chariots and carts.
The Kassites abandoned their own culture after a couple of generations of dominance, allowing themselves to be absorbed into Babylonian civilization.
Reception of a victorious general of the Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia. Around B. The Assyrian Empire continued to expand over the next two centuries, moving into modern-day Palestine and Syria. Under the rule of Ashurnasirpal II in B. His son Shalmaneser spent the majority of his reign fighting off an alliance between Syria, Babylon and Egypt, and conquering Israel. One of his sons rebelled against him, and Shalmaneser sent another son, Shamshi-Adad, to fight for him. Three years later, Shamshi-Adad ruled.
A new dynasty began in B. Modeling himself on Sargon the Great, he divided the empire into provinces and kept the peace. His undoing came when the Chaldeans attempted to invade and Sargon II sought an alliance with them. The Chaldeans made a separate alliance with the Elamites, and together they took Babylonia.
Sargon II lost to the Chaldeans but switched to attacking Syria and parts of Egypt and Gaza, embarking on a spree of conquest before eventually dying in battle against the Cimmerians from Russia. Esarhaddon struggled to rule his expanded empire.
A paranoid leader, he suspected many in his court of conspiring against him and had them killed. His son Ashurbanipal is considered to be the final great ruler of the Assyrian empire. Ruling from to B. Nabopolassar attempted to take Assyria but failed. His son Nebuchadnezzar reigned over the Babylonian Empire following an invasion effort in B. Nebuchadnezzar is known for his ornate architecture, especially the Hanging Gardens of Babylon , the Walls of Babylon and the Ishtar Gate.
Under his rule, women and men had equal rights. Nebuchadnezzar is also responsible for the conquest of Jerusalem , which he destroyed in B. He appears in the Old Testament because of this action. Nabonidus was such an unpopular king that Mesopotamians did not rise to defend him during the invasion.
Babylonian culture is considered to have ended under Persian rule, following a slow decline of use in cuneiform and other cultural hallmarks.
Eventually, the region was taken by the Romans in A. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, with followers worshipping several main gods and thousands of minor gods.
The three main gods were Ea Sumerian: Enki , the god of wisdom and magic, Anu Sumerian: An , the sky god, and Enlil Ellil , the god of earth, storms and agriculture and the controller of fates. Ea is the creator and protector of humanity in both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of the Great Flood. In the latter story, Ea made humans out of clay, but the God Enlil sought to destroy humanity by creating a flood. Ea had the humans build an ark and mankind was spared. If this story sounds familiar, it should; foundational Mesopotamian religious stories about the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, and the Creation of the Tower of Babel found their way into the Bible, and the Mesopotamian religion influenced both Christianity and Islam.
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