Fertile Crescent short reading questions

What did people do BEFORE they became agricultural?

• They were regular cultural.

• Hunted and gathered food

• They planted crops.

• They experimented with irrigation.

What sentence reveals why people settled around rivers?

• Before the rise of Sumer, people hunted animals and gathered whatever food they could find in the wild.

• Slowly, people discovered that certain plants could be cultivated, and they began to rely on the steady supply of crops.

• Fertile areas became more attractive.

• At first, they carried vessels of water from the rivers to their fields.

What sentence defines irrigation?

• When the Sumerians decelopes irrigated agriculture, they no longer needed to rely only on rain to water their crops.

• Barley and wheat and vegetables grew easily.

• At first, they carried vessels of water from the rivers to their fields.

• Later, farmers made narrow breaks in the natural levees along the riverbanks to divert some of the river water onto the fields.

What is the word for man-made waterways?

Mesopotamia means

• fertile land

• fertile crescent

• the land between the rivers

• obstacle overcomers

Between what two rivers was Mesopotamia located?

• Tigris River

• Rio Grande River

• Euphrates River

• Mesopotamia River

• Yellow River

What problems did the Mesopotamians have because of the rivers?

• hot summers caused very dry land

• the ground was too dry to dig for irrigation

• rivers flooded during the rainy season

• the rivers would dry up twice a year

What was the purpose of irrigation systems?

• to make animals want to come live on the farms

• to give shelter from the hot sun

• to provide wood

• to divert river water to their lands

A group of people who live in a complex, organized society:

Digging trenches that caused water to move from the rivers to their fields.