MESOPOTAMIA: HOW WERE THE SUMERIAN CITIES RULED? HOW WERE THE ZIGGURATS BUILT? Mesopotamia is the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Farmers used the river water to irrigate fields and grow plentiful crops. Around 3500 BC, the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia built the world’s first cities, including Ur, Uruk, and Eridu. HOW WERE THE SUMERIAN CITIES RULED? Mighty kings, who commanded large armies, had strong cities, great palaces, and magnificent royal tombs made. The kings were assisted by priests and well-trained scribes, who collected taxes, controlled irrigation projects, and took charge of laws governing city crafts and trade. Priests also served the gods in ziggurats (temples). HOW WERE THE ZIGGURATS BUILT? Mesopotamian builders built ziggurats and houses from bricks made of mud mixed with chopped straw (left to dry and harden in the sun). Teams of workmen moved huge loads of bricks using sleds on wooden rollers, or carried smaller quantities in baskets on their backs. Mud was used as a mortar to bind the bricks. ZIGGURAT AT UR Ziggurats were holy “mountains,” where people could get closer to the gods. The ziggurat at Ur (in modern Iraq) was built in around 2100 BC. Originally, it had three tall terraces (raised levels), one on top of the other, which were planted with trees and flowers. A shrine to Nanna, the Moon god, stood at the top. Today, only the temple’s lower section survives.

FIRST SCRIPTS: WHAT WERE EARLY FORMS OF WRITING LIKE? WHERE ELSE DID PEOPLE USE PICTOGRAMS? Writing was invented in Mesopotamia, around 3200 BC. Cities had grown so big that people could no longer do business by keeping every detail in their heads. Rulers needed to keep track of who had paid their taxes, which craftworkers had been given rations, and how many goods they had made. WHAT WERE EARLY FORMS OF WRITING LIKE? The first writing was made up of pictograms—small pictures representing objects or expressing actions or ideas. These writing systems, which included CUNEIFORM, were complicated, and few people managed to learn them. WHERE ELSE DID PEOPLE USE PICTOGRAMS? Different forms of picture-writing developed in Egypt, China, and Meso- (Middle) America. In the Indus Valley, scribes used pictures combined with symbols—a system that today’s experts have still not explained. CUNEIFORM Cuneiform is the name given to the wedge-shaped script, written using trimmed reeds, developed by scribes in Sumer around 2900 BC. It was borrowed by other Middle Eastern peoples to write and develop their own languages, before the ALPHABETwas developed. HOW WAS THE FIRST SCRIPT WRITTEN? The first pictograms were scratched on to tablets of wet clay, using stalks from reeds that grew beside Mesopotamian rivers. The tablets were then dried in the sun to preserve the written text. Scribes (people trained to copy manuscripts) soon began to trim the reeds to make a triangular tip, which created clear, wedge-shaped marks. ALPHABET The world’s first alphabet was invented in around 1000 BC by the Phoenicians, who lived in the eastern Mediterranean region. Unlike pictogram scripts, the alphabet used letters that stood for individual sounds. WHY WAS THE FIRST ALPHABET SO IMPORTANT? The Phoenicians discovered that letters could be put together in different combinations to spell almost all known words. Alphabetic writing needed fewer than 30 letters, compared with the 600 cuneiform symbols used by Sumerian scribes, or the 5,000 characters used by Chinese scholars. This made it much easier to learn, so literacy (reading and writing) became much more widespread in societies using alphabetic scripts. ROSETTA STONE In 196 BC, Egyptian scribes carved the same text in three different scripts on this stone. It was discovered in Rosetta, Egypt, in 1799, and provided the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphs.

INDUS VALLEY: HOW DID THE PEOPLE OF THE INDUS VALLEY LIVE? WHY DID INDUS VALLEY CITIES DISAPPEAR? FIND OUT MORE Between around 3500 BC and 2000 BC, people in the Indus Valley built more than 100 towns. The largest were Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, with populations of 40,000. These towns had large temples, granaries, brick houses, and streets laid out in neat grid patterns. HOW DID THE PEOPLE OF THE INDUS VALLEY LIVE? Farmers grew wheat, barley, cotton, and rice on land fertilized by yearly Indus River floods. They also raised animals. In towns, people made cloth, pottery, metalwork, and jewelry. On the coast, they went abroad to trade. WHY DID INDUS VALLEY CITIES DISAPPEAR? At Mohenjo-Daro, the Indus River changed its course, causing a water shortage. Other towns may have been destroyed by floods, disease, or invaders. But nobody knows for sure why the Indus Valley civilization collapsed.

PREHISTORIC POTTERY: WHY WERE THE FIRST POTS SO IMPORTANT? FIND OUT MORE Pottery-making was invented in Japanese fishing communities, inc.10,500 BC. When they cooked, people noticed that the clay soil underneath their fires baked and became hard. They soon began to shape clay into pots, cook them on bonfires, and leave them to cool. WHY WERE THE FIRST POTS SO IMPORTANT? Unlike earlier containers—made from leather, woven twigs, bark, and string—clay pots were heatproof and waterproof. They made it possible to cook soups and stews, brew drinks such as wine and beer, and store grain and oil for long periods. The remains of pots help archaeologists to identify different peoples.

FIRST METALWORKERS: WHAT WAS BRONZE USED FOR? HOW WAS BRONZE FIRST MADE? WHO MADE THE FIRST BRONZE OBJECTS? FIND OUT MORE From around 9000 BC, people in different lands began to work with nuggets of soft metals, such as copper. Later, they discovered how to extract metals, such as tin, from rocks by smelting (heating). Finally, they discovered how to melt metals together to make new materials called alloys, such as bronze. Table 41. SOME OF THE FIRST METALWORKERS 9000 BCHammered copper, Central Asia 5000 BCGold/copper, Europe 4000 BCBronze, Middle East 2300 BCBronze, Europe 1500 BCIron, western Asia 1000 BCIron, Europe WHAT WAS BRONZE USED FOR? Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin. It is much harder than either metal, and can be sharpened to make a cutting edge. It was used to create more powerful and long-lasting weapons, tools, and farm implements. Craftworkers also used it to make intricate castings—objects made by pouring melted bronze into a mold. HOW WAS BRONZE FIRST MADE? Bronze-workers heated copper and tin in a furnace fueled by charcoal. When the two metals melted, they combined to form liquid-hot bronze, which ran down a clay pipe into containers made of clay or sand. When cold, these ingots (solid blocks of metal) were remelted and poured into different-shaped molds. WHO MADE THE FIRST BRONZE OBJECTS? The technique of making bronze objects—by pouring molten (melted) metal into molds—was invented in western Asia in around 3000 BC. It was also discovered separately in China in around 2000 BC. The Chinese bronze-makers developed their skills to create much more elaborate patterns and designs.