Acheivements & Inventions of Sumerians & Mesopotamians

Table of Contents

Achievements/              
Inventions        

Writing

The 12 month calendar

The wheel

The ox drawn plough

The sail boat

Irrigation

The first written law code

The invention of a way to measure time      

Ziggurats    

Sewers      

Music and musical instruments        

Religion and Gods
     
Writing
The ancient Sumerians believed in education. Record keeping was very important to them, and also a vital part of their life. They wanted their sons to learn how to read and write.  
Only a select group of boys were able to attend Sumerian schools. The boys were usually sons of the very wealthy.
All the sacrifice and schooling was worth it. Once a student successfully completed twelve years of schooling, he was an official scribe, or writer. This was a prestigious position in Sumerian society. Scribes were very valuable in order to maintain and improve the record keeping that the Sumerians deemed so very necessary.

The Mesopotamian written language began as pictograms, pictures of things that acted as words. Pictograms worked, but they were not very informative and so they were only used for simple messages, such as information about crops and taxes. Over time, the need for writing changed and the signs developed into a script of wedge-shaped symbols - we call this written language cuneiform.
I think that Cuneiform was really important and vital to the Mesopotamian race. I think this because it was used a lot in the Mesopotamian lifestyle, and also because Cuneiform was used by people throughout the ancient Near East to write several different languages, which means that it led to our written language which we still use today!

The 12 month calendar
In Mesopotamia, the solar year was divided into two seasons, the "summer," which included the barley harvests at the end of May or the beginning of June, and the "winter," which roughly... [continues]

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