A Difficult Environment
Mesopotamia is located in the modern country of ___
What is Iraq?
The first Neolithic people in Mesopotamia lived and farmed in this region.
What are the Zargos Mountains?
The name of the region in Mesopotamia on the plains where people settle after coming from the foothills.
What is Sumer?
A system to control water.
What is irrigation system?
Using natural resources, Sumerians built strong walls with this.
What is "mud bricks"?
The word Mesopotamia means "____________ ".
What is "land between rivers" or "...between two rivers"
The reason there were food shortages in the foothills.
What is overpopulation?
The reason silt was a problem for the people of Sumer.
What is clogged the canals?
The main purpose of dams and reservoirs.
What is "to store water for later use"?
To protect cities from attack, the people of Sumer also dug these around their city.
What are moats?
Mesopotamia is between these rivers.
What are Tigris and Euphrates?
The reason the foothills were a good place to farm.
What is plenty of rain?
Multiple Choice: Which of the following describes the water supply for the Sumerian farmers?
A: Farmers had too much water all the time
B: Famers never had enough water
C: Farmers either had too much or too little water
What is "C" Farmers had too much or too little water.
The main purpose of a levee.
What is "to prevent the river from flooding"?
The major flaw in the Sumerian system of canals that flowed through many different cities.
What is "cities upriver could block water flow to cities downriver"?
The earliest settlements in Mesopotamia that were like small, independent countries.
What are "city-states"?
The solution to the food shortage in the foothills.
What is move to the plains/rivers?
The key to successful farming in Sumer.
What is controlling the water supply/rivers?
This became the main problem with the irrigation canals.
What is clogged with silt?
This geographic reason made it hard for Sumer villages to protect themselves.
What is "Sumer was on the plains with no hills or trees to protect them"?
The major reason why Mesopotamia was a difficult environment to live in.
What is the sun was hot, and there was little rain.
A good resource in the foothills for building shelters.
What are trees/wood/timber?
Analogy:
Water is to reservoir as money is to _____ .
What is bank?
The main reason the villages of Sumer depended on each other.
What is to cooperate to keep the water systems working?
The major physical feature that lies between the waters of the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf.
What are the Zagros Mountains?