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Tigris and Euphrates start in the Armenian Highlands, where the mountains stop the clouds
- They bring silt that enriches floodplains but is less predictable than the Nile (which begins at Lake Victoria, that serves as a buffer)
- Before falling into an ocean, they split and form a dense marsh.
- The land had little stone or wood, so stuff was built with clay (mud bricks) and reed (bundled into beams).
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Agriculture
- Making canals
- Date palms provide shade to grow other cultures
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Great Flood
- The oldest continuously told story in human history
- It might be echoing the great thawing of ice caps that led to a water rise of 130 meters, separated Asia and America, and turned Britain into an island
- The sea was rising in the Middle East, for 5k years eating the land (forming the Persian Gulf?)
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The need to organize the building and maintenance of the canals required sophisticated organization
- Sumerian creation myth says that Marduk killed Tiamat and shaped land from her remains – which might reflect how Sumerians drained the marshes that created farmlands
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City-states were centered around temples, ruled by priest-kings, and often assisted by a council of elders (male and female)
- No bigger than 10k people
- Eridu being the first one
- Initial cities had no walls and didn't maintain trained soldier caste
- Use of slave labor
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3500 BCE - the invention of writing
- Clay for tablets and reed styluses
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Start of mass-producing pottery (prior, it was luxury)
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Uruk (3100 BC)
- population: 40k residents (80-90k living in its environs)
- area: 6 km2
- massive walls
- some level of urban planning
- richer houses are built from baked bricks, poor ones are mud or clay bricks
- housing arranged chaotically, the alleys are covered with reed matting
- slept on rooftops, to avoid accumulated heat
- no sewage system, waste is thrown out onto the streets
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Ur
- traded a lot
- produced a lot of food and traded in surplus. Imported copper, tin, timber, silver, and so on
- traded with the Indus Valley Civilization
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Lugalzagesi, a Sumerian prince, claimed to conquer all the lands between the upper and bottom sea (30-something kings were defeated)
- the last Sumerian king before Sargon the Great
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Sargon, founder of the Akkadian Empire
- after the conquest, destroyed walls of the conquered cities
- his military prowess hold the empire
- only his grandson managed to stabilize conquered empire
- centralized empire’s administration
- switched from Sumerian as official language to Akkadian
- appointed fellow Akkadians as officials and positioned Akkadians as garrisons in other cities
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4.2-kiloyear event
Starting around 2200 BC, it most likely lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of their desired habitat,as well as the migration of Indo-European-speaking people into India.
Some scientists disagree with that conclusion, citing evidence that the event was not a global drought and did not happen in a clear timeline.
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Gutians (nomads) swiped on the Akkadian Empire and conquered it – but could not hold it (still, ruled 1.5 century)
- Akkadians write about them in a despised manner (wild, illiterate, barbaric)
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After Ur-Namu, all cities had ziggurats
- Ur’s Ziggurat was 30 m high (the biggest)
- baked clay bricks