The Rise of Sumerian City-States

Based on its name, what do you know about Mesopotamia?

• It is located between two rivers
• It is located in mountain foothills
• It was home for a large population     
• It was home of the world’s first cities

Early Sumerian cities were walled settlements surrounded by farmland.  The strong city walls were built of sunbaked bricks.  Moats, or ditches filled with water, surrounded the walls.
What does this tell you about the Sumerians? 

• They did not trade with others
• They protected themselves from others
• They did not produce their own food
• They lived during the Paleolithic Age

What change, caused by farming in northern Mesopotamia, led people to move south?

• The population increased, and there wasn’t enough food 
• The people fought, and they needed to find new places to live
• The climate changed, and it got too dry to keep living there
• The soil got overused, and plants could no longer grow there

Sumerians used levees, canals, and dams to… 

• keep water away from neighboring towns
• control the amount of water in the valley
• make ponds where they could wash clothes 
• create waterfalls so they had water power

 What happened when people from many villages used Sumerian irrigation systems?

• Cities had to have moats for storing water outside their walls
• Cities had to limit the number of people who could have farms
• People in the villages had to develop a language they could all speak
• People in the villages had to work together to take care of the system

Why were Sumerian settlements called city-states?

• Each settlement served the Sumerian empire
• Each settlement had its own ruler and farmland  
• Each settlement had its own irrigation system
• Each settlement recorded the empire’s history

Why didn’t Sumerians continue living in small villages, as their ancestors had?

• They needed more land so they could gather enough food
• They needed more trees so they could build enough homes
• They had to work together to maintain the irrigation system
• They had to live together to protect themselves from outsiders

What made it harder to live in Sumer than in the Zagros foothills?

• Sumer lacked natural barriers to keep out enemies
• Sumer had many hills that made farming difficult
• Sumer had many stones that needed to be cleared from farmland
• Sumer lacked strong people to build canals

Mesopotamia is a Greek word that means “Land between the rivers”.

• True
• False

There was plenty of food in the hills for all the people, so they built a bigger city in the mountains.

• True
• False