Posted on 03/25/2020 8:25:48 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Along with inventing writing, the wheel, the plow, law codes and literature, the Sumerians are also remembered as some of history's original brewers... dating back to the fourth millennium B.C. The brewing techniques they used are still a mystery, but their preferred ale seems to have been a barley-based concoction so thick that it had to be sipped through a special kind of filtration straw. The Sumerians prized their beer for its nutrient-rich ingredients and hailed it as the key to a "joyful heart and a contented liver." ...
The Sumerian invention of cuneiform -- a Latin term literally meaning "wedge-shaped" -- dates to sometime around 3400 B.C. In its most sophisticated form, it consisted of several hundred characters that ancient scribes used to write words or syllables on wet clay tablets with a reed stylus... The Sumerians seem to have first developed cuneiform for the mundane purposes of keeping accounts and records of business transactions, but over time it blossomed into a full-fledged writing system used for everything from poetry and history to law codes and literature. Since the script could be adapted to multiple languages, it was later used over the course of several millennia by more than a dozen different cultures. In fact, archaeologists have found evidence that Near East astronomical texts were still being written in cuneiform as recently as the first century A.D.
The origins of the sixty-second minute and sixty-minute hour can be traced all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia... Base-60 eventually fell out of use, but its legacy still lives on in the measurements of the both hour and the minute... [and] spatial measurements such as the 360 degrees in a circle and the 12 inches in a foot.
(Excerpt) Read more at history.com ...
They invented the Sumer home which can be relaxing
See, this is what I love about Free Republic and the Internet in general-I am a history buff, but my understanding of history is largely bound from about the Middle Ages on, though I have delved into some Roman, Egyptian, and Greek.
Your post made me look up the clay tablets of Mari, and now I know a tiny bit about them.
Just lots of bits and pieces, but I am richer for them!
Thank you.
Imagine the sewage and stench that these 80k people produced with their minimal sanitation abilities. I know that the infant death rates must have been horrendous! these start-up civilizations, to which we owe a great debt, got their start in the areas that could benefit from organized agriculture, which is why the 3 centers were in China, Indus River and this 'Fertile Crescent'.
LOL. On a similar note my parents were Zoroastrians when I was a kid. They made me dress up with the cape and mask and hat every day. The only day of the year I wasn’t bullied was Halloween.
“get more prosperous than their neighbors and
would march on out and conquer as many as they could”
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The ancient land of Sumeria is now called Iraq.
Not much has changed in their culture.
/rimshot!
...and then along comes Mari...
Ouch. How was the candy?
Woolley pointed out a cultural practice -- to bury the deceased family members under the (dirt/mortar) floor of the house -- which couldn't have been that hygienic, and he speculated that the large size of these cities may have been in part due to abandonment of contaminated homes. I doubt this though. And I don't remember reading that Gacy's family had to move out over that problem.
Hahaha...I wasn’t expecting that...:)
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