to also communicate better with each other. The advantage that best equipped them to survive the challenge of early humanity, in my opinion, was the use of fire for heat light and cooking and the ability to use symbolic language. Not only did fire give the early humans more types of food that they could easily digest, it gave them protection from the elements as well. The ability to better communicate permitted them to move into areas were other early humans lived and to interact and interbreed with them eventually making other hominids extinct (McKay et al., 2014). Reference McKay, J. P., Hill, B. D., Buckler, J., Crowston, C. H., Weisner-Hanks, M. E., & Perry, J. (2014). A history of western society: From antiquity to the enlightenment (11th ed., Vol. 1). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. o Question 2 – 300 Words
Determine why none of kingdoms of ancient Mesopotamia were able to maintain supremacy in the region for very long. Discuss their cultures, religions, governments, and impacts to explain your answer. The hills and valleys between the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers saw the development of several early civilizations and the world’s first city, Uruk. The first system of writing used to document their society was created there. Large temples honoring their god and goddesses were built. Over the next thousand years’ other cities grew in the area, traded with each other and adopted writing (McKay et al., 2014). Mesopotamia developed, in large part, because of the geography. These cultures, including the Sumerians along the Tigris, used the rivers to trade goods and irrigation for their crops. Around 2500 B.C.E there were over a dozen cities that developed religion, politics, and militaries in the southern part of Mesopotamia called Sumer. The Sumerians, and other cities, believed that the world was controlled by a god and goddesses who embodied the sun, moon, water and storms (McKay et al., 2014). They believed that humans were created to serve the gods. A patriarchal hereditary dynasty was created with rule passing from kings to their sons. Lugalzagesi, the king of Umma, created a more unified state by conquering other cities. Kings made unions with other kings and powerful people often times through marriage (McKay et al., 2014). Because of the wealth accumulated by the Sumerian cites, battles emerged over water, irrigation, land and even the flow of the rivers. The Akkadians and then the Babylonians were conquers attracted to the wealth. In the valley between the Tigris and the Euphrates,
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