Section 6 - From Small Villages to Big Cities

Section 6 - From Small Villages to Big Cities

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.  How and why did this happen?  The answer lies not only in the problems the Sumerians faced, but also in their solutions.

Multiple Choice

Sumerians ( the early people in Mesopotamia ) divided themselves into independent areas called .......?

• Countries

• Counties

• City-States

• Zones

From Small Villages To Big Cities

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.  There, farmers faced the problem of having either too much water or too little.

Poll

If you were an ancient farmer, which do you think would harder to deal with :

• Flooded Farmland

• Farmland that has no water

From small villages to big city-states

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.  This led them to live in larger communities—the first city-states.

Multiple Choice

The irrigation systems in Sumer were very complex. Complex means ......

• easy to use

• not very big

• having lots of colors

• arranged in a difficult way

From small villages to big city-states

These independent city-states often fought with one another. To defend themselves, the Sumerians built walls and dug moats around their cities. By 3000 B.C.E., the solutions to the challenges faced by the Sumerians had transformed Sumerian farming villages into walled city-states.

Poll

Which type of setting would you most like to live in ?

• I like living in the country with few people and more nature.

• I like living in the city with lots of people and things going on.