During this unit we learnt about many different topics, all of them equally interesting, the main topics included domestication of plants and animals,the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to the first civilizations and early religion and beliefs. So what did I learn about:
1.) Domestication of Plants and Animals- I learnt that as people began to ease away from being nomadic and started settling into communities, they began domesticating animals and plants. Domestication is when a group of plants or animals become accustomed to humans providing for them and having control over them. Another word for this could be to tame. When humans domesticated plants and animals they were able to use them for their own needs. Examples from today's domesticated animals are cows, which provide us with milk and cheese and pigs, which provide us with meat. Some example of a domesticated plants from include wheat and corn, these two plants have many uses and their domestication was impacted people greatly. Domestication in general also impacted people greatly because it helped with the transition to farming which led to excess in or surplus of food. When all the people did not have to work full time on a field they started expanding and trying different things which led to civilizations developing.
This is a picture of wheat.
2.) The transition from hunter-gatherer communities to the first civilizations- The transition from hunter-gatherers to the first civilizations was a slow one. Yet when the transition happened and people were settled and they had a steady source of food. This meant people were farming (also thanks to domestication) yet with people farming in one area, domestication also allowed them to not need so much attention on the fields. Since there were less people working on one task more people could branch out and try new things. This, as I mentioned before, was the start of the first civilization. With people trying new things these communities started to grow in diversity (and in size thanks to the surplus of food) people working with metal, making pottery and all sorts of talents started to pop up. As these thing grew the first civilizations started to evolve.
3.) Early religion and beliefs- Along with developing different talents people started to develop beliefs and religion, an example of one of the religions from a first empire in Mesopotamia was the Zoroastrian religion from the Achaemenid Empire. This religion was developed by the prophet Zoroaster, it went from polytheism to monotheism. Most beliefs and religions started out this way with one person and then it spread out to other people who decided that they either liked or disliked the idea.
All these things came together to make civilizations like the ones in Mesopotamia: The fertile crescent.
One thing people may say is that "Learning about the Sumerians isn't very important since they're long gone!"
Well, this person would be very wrong because Sumerians gave us things that we still use today which have made an impact on our daily lives. These things include the sail, the wheel and plows. We still use all these things or versions of these things today. Look at your car, without the invention of the wheel it would probably be non-existent. Farming was made much simpler thanks to the invention of the plow. Also sails are used for mostly sailboats which nowadays are used usually for leisurely activities but back then where used for transport a lot. One thing that all these inventions taught us is how to harness power. An example is with the sail, humans learned to harness the power of wind. These inventions are definitely not negligible, they have impacted, as I said before, peoples daily lives.
<---This is a ancient plow.
A picture of the Mesopotamia area.
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