Mesopotamia
What was Mesopotamia?
Mesopotamia is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in modern days roughly corresponding to most of Iraq, Kuwait and Syria. The Sumerians lived there and dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history to the fall of Babylon Empire.
Do you want to know more? Watch this video: Mesopotamia kids - Sumer
Daily Life
At the beginning, most of the people lived in small villages. They were hunters and collectors. When large cities appeared, all sorts of jobs and activities appeared, like priest, soldier, merchant and scribe.
Similar to the Egyptian civilization, society was divided into different classes of people.
They lived in mud brick houses that worked at insulator helping to keep the homes cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
Written Language
Writing and reading are very important skills. With them, we can learn lots of things.
It began because people needed to express their ideas in a physical format such as stone, wood or clay.
The first form of writing were the pictograms, but the Sumerians realised that there were somethings that couldn't be expressed with pictograms, so they invented the syllabic system which divided each word by cuneiform signs. From there it evolved from then until today.
Ziggurat
Ziggurats are a type of massive structures built in ancient Mesopotamia. It has the form of a terraced compound of successively receding stories or levels.
Nowadays, the best preserved Ziggurat is:
The Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq
The Tower of Babel
The Ishtar Gate
Babylon Hanging Gardens
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon didn't really "hang" in the sense of being suspended by cables or ropes. The name comes from an incorrect translation of the Greek. They were full of terraces or a balconies with lots of plants.
In class
ACTIVITIES:
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Follow the steps from the tutorial to draw and color this architecture!
Ziggurat Project Building: Create your own ziggurat with recycling materials
The Tower of Babel: Watch the video and represents in a picture the idea of story.
Cuneiform Writing in clay: Create a smooth surface on your clay block and write on it whatever you want
My own Ishtar Gate: Print the worksheets and colour how you imagine this beautiful gate.
Google Expeditions (Virtual 360º Tour)
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