Ancient Civilizations Chapter Summary

Civilization is what comes from society, ways of life and culture in a particular area, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary online. Professor Benson went over culture and other aspects of what a civilization is more thoroughly, in Chapter 1: Early Civilizations Lecture, to mention hierarchy, art, religion, technology, science, economy, urbanization, unification, and records. Through reading both the lecture and the textbook, it’s been learned that civilizations developments can depend on environmental factors which can shape what they trade to other civilizations and the type of work the people of the civilizations did in order to survive or live in comfort. Mesopotamia would be an example of how from using their surroundings people developed a culture and way of life. Mesopotamia

According to Western Civilizations by Cole, Symes, Coffin and Stacey, Sumer was a city-state with more power over Mesopotamia with wealthy people living within it but also poor slaves who were prisoners of war or prisoners by punishment working for them. The wealth of the city-state came from the wealthy priests who engaged in long distance trade as the Mesopotamian and Sumerian cultures believed that to please the gods they must bring wealth and glory to their cities.1 Sumer had the capability to make weapons and tools from metals and yet had no mines or areas of metal, most metal for them was imported for them to work on and the weapons/tools were traded.1 Later, Sumerians realized they could make metals using certain ingredients instead of trading for metals, so their environment made them learn a skill to benefit them.1 Sumerians, like the Mesopotamians who lived not far from them, also had clay in their soil and used it to create tablets to write on called cuneiform which became the writing form used by those in the Mesopotamian