Food Shortages
Uncontrolled Water Supply
Irrigation
Attacks
Vocabulary
100

This is how you could describe Mesopotamian soil for most of the year.


What is hard and dry?


100

The two main rivers in Sumerian city-states were settled near.

What are the Tigris and Euphrates?

100
The Sumerian irrigation system passed through many of these as it carried water from the river to the fields.
What are villages?
100
As Sumerian cities grew, they fought over the right to use this.
What is water?
100
A means of supplying land with water.
What is irrigation system?
200

These were difficult to find on the plains of Mesopotamia.


What is building materials?


200
Rain and melted snow cause these to occur in the Sumerian rivers during the spring.
What are floods?
200
This is what Sumerian canals would get clogged with (very fine mud).
What is silt?
200
The plains provided none of these for protection.
What are natural barriers?
200
ancient people who lived in the geographic region of Sumer.
What are Sumerians?
300

These are the Mountains in northern Mesopotamia where people started farming in the foothills.


What are the Zagros Mountains?


300
Sumerian farmers began to create these to provide water for their fields.
What are irrigation systems?
300
Because they had to work together, farmers could no longer live ______________.
What is apart or in small groups?
300
For protection, Sumerians began to build these around their cities.
What are walls?
300
A wall of earth built to prevent a river from flooding its banks.
What is a levee?
400

This is what farmers did not have enough of in the Zagros foothills.


What is land?


400
These are what Sumerians dug to shape the paths the water took.
What are canals?
400
This is what Sumerian farmers did to make sure that water levels were balanced.
What is scoop water from one reservoir into another?
400
This is what the Sumerian walls were made out of.
What are mud bricks.
400
In ancient times, the geographic area located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
What is Mesopotamia?
500

Driven by the need for food, people moved out of the foothills and onto what?


What are the plains?


500
Sumerians constructed these to block the water and force it to collect in pools they had built.
What are dams?
500
Between 3500 and 3000 B.C.E., villages grew into these.
What are towns?
500
Sumerians also dug these outside city walls to prevent enemies from entering the city.
What are moats?
500
An early city that was like a small, independent country with its own laws and government.
What is a city-state?
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