Ancient Mesopotamia
Lilli Neal
Methods of Transportion
The Sumerians traveled on 7 things.The Sumerians walked on foot.They also traveled on a gulf boat,which is just a huge ship. They also traveled on donkeys and coracle,and a coracle is just a boat like thing that floats on water that is circle shaped and made out of animal skin. They also traveled on rafts and river boats and river boats just look like long canoes.The last thing the Sumerians traveled on was carts, carts where just made out of local timber held together with copper or bronze nails,or wooden pegs. Donkeys or Oxen where used to pull the cart.
The Writing System
The worlds first system of writing was called Cuneiform.The Sumerians invented the worlds first writing system without pens,pencil,or paper.The Sumerians used sharp tools to make shapes or you could call them wedge-shaped symbols on clay tablets. These sharp tools the Sumerians used are called styluses.Earlier written communication had used pictographs.A pictograph represented an object like some kind of animal or tree. A pictograph is a picture symbol.To keep there business records they used a scribe.A scribe is a writer hired to keep track of what items people traded.In time,Sumerians started to put there writing history, law, grammar, math ,literature ,stories, proverbs, songs, and poems.The poems they made where a big thing.The poems they wrote where about the gods. There poems where called epics,long poems that tell the stories of heroes. There poems later ended up making the people create The Epic of Gilgamesh,the story of the legendary Sumerian King.
Inventions
The Sumerians created a lot of inventions! A important invention was the wheel,they were the first people to invent wheels.In other words they were the first people to build wheeled vehicles,such as carts. They also invented the potters wheel, it spins clay as a crafts person shapes it into a bowl.The Sumerians also invented the plow. The plow pulled by oxen increased farm production.Plows broke through the hard clay soil of summer. The Sumerians also invented the clock.This clock was not like ours it was a clock that used falling water to measure time.They made strong tools and weapons with bronze.They also produced makeup and glass jewelry. The Sumerians also built sewers under city streets.These are all different things the Sumerians invented.