notes from class

200,000 years ago a human species emerged in southwestern Africa

14,000 years ago, a worldwide human race existed

Earliest prehistoric age is the Paleolithic age (Old Stone Age)

Neolithic Age (New Stone Age) was marked by advanced tool making and the beginnings of agriculture

Initially, humans were parts of migratory groups which hunted, fished and gathered

• the district known as Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

• Population increased dramatically due to new irrigation techniques
• Cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants
• better food storage allowed for diversity in professions: priests, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, farmers
• Kings emerged, as did family dynasties and the concept of the “city-state”
• Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as “cuneiform”

• 
  
• 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

• Wandering nomads drove herds of domesticated animals in many areas, especially to the south of Sumer in Arabia
• Sumer was conquered by the Akkadians c. 2350 B.C. - their gods took the place of previous gods and all were forced to worship them
• 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