Achievments of Ancient Mesopotamia
Created, distributed, presented and researched by TylerBuman
My pick for the top five achievements of Mesopotamia
The Ziggurats, Irrigation, Plumbing, Dice, and Surgical Procedures.
My Reasoning
My reasons for these five are because I believe they are the most important or helpful in today's world and back then.
My top three out of the top five.
Irrigation
I picked irrigation because without it, they would not have prospered and rose above the rest of the world to create the first civilization. It gave them surpluses of food and water and that meant that everyone knew there would always be enough food, leading to less fighting over it and more peace and stability. It allowed them to build capitols, temples, and palaces. It allowed them to field armies. Today, irrigation is everywhere, without it, probably half of the places that produce food in the world would no longer be able to. If that happened, domestic animals would loose their feed, and then humans, and their would likely be much more widespread famine than their already is. Irrigation powers cities in the desert. Las Vegas for example, would become uninhabitable without the irrigation canals leading to it. Irrigation allows nations like the United States to grow far more food than they'll ever need. When people don't have to worry about food all the time, it creates time for things like inventing smartphones and the internet.
Plumbing
I picked plumbing because in ancient times, it was invented and it allowed water to brought to many individual places, such as public baths or faucets in royal palaces. Because of pipes, they were able to build the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Plumbing meant sewers and that meant filth and excrement could be drained from cities, that meant much better health and cleaner places to live. It also allowed for the drainage of flood waters, keeping cities and fields above sea level. Today, plumbing does all that and more. We use it every day, every time you wash your hands, take a drink, take a shower, flush the toilet, even the public swimming pool is made possible by pipes and drains.
Surgical Performances
I picked this because surgery 3,000 years ago, even though it was primitive and dangerous, still saved lives, and to me this makes it important. People who have been internally injured might be saved by these practices, if someone was stabbed, they might be sewn back together. They performed surgeries on people who had headaches to relieve their pain. Today, surgeries help millions of people ever year. People who have been shot, people who have been run over by a car, people who have been hit by shrapnel of some sort, people who have had heart attacks. It even saved my younger brother. He would have died a year and a half ago if they had not been able to repair his skull and stop his brain from bleeding. It allows surgeons to perform what would seem like miracles of Jesus to the ancient Mesopotamian.
The other two
Dice
I picked dice because they are entertaining. So they must have been for the Mesopotamians too, that's probably why they invented them. Dice were a way to pass the time, to gamble, to raise spirits after a hard day. They led to many many different games that have been made of the years. They were multiple sided dice, the most common type was the six sided and it was identical 3,000 years to what we have today except for the material their made of. Today, dice are in half the board games in the world. Yahtzee, Monopoly, Shoots and Ladders. They are all over the place and you use them often, if you play games.
Archtecture and the Ziggurats
I picked this one because it visibly influences us today. 3,000 years ago, when they built their temples, to make them tall, they built layer upon layer of consecutively smaller sheets of clay atop each other to make a tall, stable design. Also to convey importance, these buildings were placed in the very center of cities so that they could be seen best from any direction. It was also a constant reminder to the citizens of their gods and their power. Today, tall buildings are usually built in the same fashion, in the central, important part of a city, and gradually getting smaller floor by floor all the way to the top and or keeping the majority of the structures mass at the bottom so that they are stable. Even stadiums are built in an exact invert of this principle.