Agricultural Inventions

• Irrigation: Canals that carry water from rivers to farmland.

• Bronze: A mix of copper and tin, much stronger.

• Plow and funnel: Allowed farmers to plow and plant at the same time.

• ​Farmers need to control water supply for larger crop yields.

• ​Brick dams were designed to block water from flooding and to store water during the summer.

• The ​blocked water would be collected in multilevel pools called reservoirs.

Irrigation

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Building

• Sumerians may not have had a lot of metal or wood available, but they did have a lot of one thing... MUD!!

• It was cool in the summer, warm in the winter.

Building

• Ziggurats - top level: Shrine for the city's special god.

• Next: Palace for the king & Houses for the priests

• Bottom level: Shops, Homes, Workshops

Transportation - Land

• World's oldest wheels were found in Mesopotamia - 3500 BC.

• First to attach wheels to carts to make 2 and 4 wheeled carts pulled by oxen or donkeys

• Traders led caravans of donkeys using these carts.

Transportation - Water

• Earliest boat was shaped like a basket and built from reeds and animal skins

• Because of the mast and sail, we think it is the world's first sailboat

• They also had canoe-shaped boats guided with poles

Writing

• Pictures of things that acted as words.

• Cuneiform: Wedge-shaped symbols for objects and ideas.

• Few people knew how to write, so scribes were needed to record information

• There were 700 symbols, each representing a different sound!

The sundial is the oldest known device for the measurement of time

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It uses the shadows from the sun to tell the time of day.​

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The Sundial

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• Metalworkers melted copper and tin to make the strongest metal at the time - bronze.

• ​They poured the liquids into molds and let it harden.

• Bronze was used to make strong weapons, reliable tools, and beautiful jewelry. ​

Metalworking

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