Food shortages
Why did they move
So they can get food and water
Where is Mesopotamia right now
Iraq
why did they build barriers
so they can stop the over flow of water
Canals became clogged with silt, so farmers
Had to clean it regularly
These independent city-states often fought with one another. To defend themselves,
he Sumerians built walls and dug moats around their cities.
For much of the rest of the year, Sumer's sun baked soil was dry and hard as stone.
so it was hard to farm and gather goods
what do they nickname of Mesopotamia
The fertile cresent
what happened to the canal
silt built up inside of it and it clogged
Since villages were connected for miles around by these canals, farmers could no longer live apart
they had to live together and
By 3000 B.C.E., the solutions to the challenges faced by the Sumerians had transformed
Sumerian farming villages into walled city-states.
Sumerian farmers began creating irrigation systems for their fields.
so it would not flood there crops
What did the Mesopotamian people not invent
horse drawn buggy
And when they had all the water and food enemy's wanted to attack
they had to build barriers around there place so it became a city state
Gradually, villages came to depend on one another to build and maintain this complex irrigation system
People who lived in different villages may have worked together to clean the silt from the irrigation system.
To control the water supply, Sumerians built a complex irrigation system
The system crossed village boundaries, so the Sumerians had to cooperate with one another.
They built levees along the sides of the river to prevent flooding.
And when the crops were dry they poked holes in the leavens
What were the first laws called
Hanmmussis code
The farmers who moved to Sumer faced many challenges.
The farmers who moved to Sumer faced many challenges.
As Sumerian cities grew, they fought over the right to use more water.
Sometimes people moved up to located up river
As you've seen, beginning around 3500 B.C.E., the Sumerians progressed from living in small farming villages
to building large, walled city-states.
Irrigation systems provided enough water for Sumerian farmers to grow plenty of food.
but the new problem rose and they had to maintain the Irrigation system.
Between 3500 and 3000 B.C.E., villages grew into towns.
of a several thousand people
During the spring, rain and melted snow from the mountains flowed
into the Tigris and Euphrates so it would flood to much
The Sumerians looked for ways to protect their cities from neighboring communities
The plains provided no natural barriers. There were no mountain ranges or rushing rivers
but also in their solutions. A basic challenge for any group of people
is how to provide food for itself. Food shortages had forced settlers in Mesopotamia to move from the foothills down to the river valley.