In this area, the land is hilly and received rain.
What is the northern part of Mesopotamia?
100
Sumerians used these to control the amount of water in the valley.
What are levees, canals, dams, and reservoirs?
100
This is a wall of earth built to prevent a river from flooding its banks.
What is a levee?
100
The Sumerians did not continue to live in small villages like their ancestors had because of this reason.
What is working together to maintain the irrigation systems?
200
Mesopotamia is a land of rolling hills and low plains located between these two rivers.
What are the Tigris River and the Euphrates River?
200
In this area, the land has low plains (flat lands) and received little rain.
What is the southern part of Mesopotamia?
200
The people were forced to do this to maintain the irrigation systems.
What is working together?
200
This is a means of supplying land with water.
What is an irrigation system?
200
Not having natural barriers to keep out enemies made it difficult for Sumerians to live in Sumer than in this area.
What are the Zagros foothills?
300
This area, in the southern part of Mesopotamia, is where cities first appeared.
What is Sumer?
300
These changes, caused by farming in northern Mesopotamia, led people to move south.
What are population increase and not enough food?
300
As Sumerian cities grew, they fought over the right to use more water. To protect their cities from their neighbors, Sumerians built these.
What are walls and moats?
300
These ancient people lived in the geographic region of Sumer.
What are Sumerians?
300
As the Sumerians worked together, they began to create these, with populations as great as several thousand people.
What are larger communities?
400
This is about the year the earliest cities in Sumer date back to.
What is 3500 B.C.?
400
This is one of the key problems people on the plains faced because the plains were either hard and dry or flooded.
What is uncontrolled water supply?
400
With the increase of population in the rolling foothills of the Zagros Mountains, the farmers did not have enough land to grow food for everyone. This solved their problem.
What is moving to the plains?
400
This very fine mud would clog the canals, which could spoil the entire system of canals.
What is silt?
400
This river still irrigates fields in Iraq today.
What is the Euphrates River?
500
These cities were like small, independent countries. They each had their own ruler and their own farmland to provide food.
What are city-states?
500
The Mesopotamians had difficulties in building and maintaining these.
What are irrigation systems?
500
This place in northern Mesopotamia had mild weather, plentiful rains, timber for building, and stones for toolmaking. This was an ideal place to farm.
What are the Zagros foothills?
500
These weeds grow near rivers.
What are reeds?
500
This upright slab of stone is inscribed with letters and pictures in memory of important events.