History pt 8: Ancient Mesopotamia

 Most of the time, agriculture was in river valleys. As the rivers would flood, and making the soil firtle. 

And our first significant civilizations. was where the first Agricultural emerged.  
Those are on the Nile, the Indus Valley along the Indus River, and in China, on the Yangtze River.
And Mesopotamia along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The word Mesopotamia comes from the words Meso (Between, and Patamos, Rivers). So the name is "Area Between Rivers."

Known as the "Cradle of Civilization, " between the Indus river valleys and Egyptians, we believe that the first civilizations were the Sumerians in Mesopotamia, now it is Modern-day Iraq, which was around southern Mesopotamia. 
It emerged around 4000 BCE, and the Sumerians created the Wheel, the basic wheel was discovered around 3500 BCE, in Sumeria.
They were famous for their architecture, and they were the first to make a Ziggurat which would be a centre of all Sumerian cities, and at the top of the ziggurats would be altered to their Gods. 

The Sumerians were the first to make a written language, there were the Egyptian Hieroglyphics, and they made Cuneiform tablets.

There is another civilization named Arkkadians, which is a civilization and language.
In Mesopotamia, roughly 3000 BCE, the primary languages are Arkkdian, a Semitic language roughly related to Arabic and Hebrew. 
The other language is Sumerian, and we believe that the first-ever Empire, came from Arcadia, by the Arkkadians.
We believe that the town of Akkad, which the ruler Sargon, or known as "Sargon the Great".
Established around the 24th century BCE, and might be the first Dynastic empire in history. The Akkadian Empire. 
He also took control of both the Northern and Southern Mesopotamia, and you will notice lots of mixing between the Akkadian and Sumerian languages.
And Akkadian is written down in the cuneiform tablets, and then the Sumerian language starts to fade.

The Akkadians rule for about 100 or so years.

The Sumerians were more dominant than the Akkadians, but when Sargon the Great started his conquest, he made the Akkadians the more dominant, there was a brief "Neo-Sumerian" empire, but a well-talked-about empire is the Babylonian empire. 
And it really became a more powerful empire under the rule of Hammurabi, he also developed a code, the code of "Hammurabi".

Another significant empire that would rise to power around the Mesopotamia area was the Assyrian empire.
Their home base was Assur, and both they and the Babylonians spoke Akkadian.

The later Assyrian period shows that there was another language the Aramaic as their language, but the Assyrians would collapse around the 7th century BCE, and be taken over by the Neo-Babylonian empire.
Probably the most famous ruler of the Babylonians was "Nebuchadnezzar II" known for keeping Jews captive in the Hebrew Bible.
But they would be overthrown around the 6th century BCE, by the Persians and Cyrus the Great, marking the end of the Jewish captivity.

They are called the Cradle of Civilization because of their technological advancements, their culture and langauge, their writings influenced cilvizatin for 7,000 - 6,000 years.