Next, ask them to imagine that in an instant all knowledge of alphabetic writing disappeared. Only the drawing of simple pictures remained as the means of written communication.
Have the class brainstorm: What would be some of the most essential things for which you would need signs? Which objects, concepts and ideas are the ones you would make sure were standardized and learned right away? Review the list of essential signs that the class has compiled. Have students create a few of them and draw them on the board. Discuss examples of messages relatively easy to communicate with pictographs and others that would be more difficult.
Writing in ancient Mesopotamia arose from necessity—specifically, the need to keep records. Gradually, civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley became more urbanized. Eventually, a number of complex systems developed: political, military, religious, legal, and commercial. Writing developed as well, becoming essential to those systems. Did writing enable those complex systems to arise or did complex systems create the need for a more sophisticated system of writing?
Ask students to recall a time they started to do a task and then realized at some point that they should have been writing things down? For example, they might imagine organizing a collection of trading cards by writing down categories. Did writing change the way they approached the task? For example, they might think of deciding to make lists of the cards by category. Ask students to think about the following questions as they track the evolution of civilization and writing in ancient Mesopotamia:.
How is it used? What does it look like in its natural state? You may wish to sketch barley on the board, or show a photograph of barley, such as this photograph.
Barley was a very important crop in ancient Mesopotamia. The first Mesopotamian written representation of barley was a picture. Ask students to think about and discuss the following questions:. Next, navigate with the class, or have students navigate on their own, through The Story of Writing website.
Each page contains information on the history and development of the cuneiform character for the word "barley" over time. Students should complete the quiz Treasure Hunt: Bowling for Barley.
Have students answer the following questions in class discussion. For larger classes you may wish to divide the class into small groups and have each group work on answering one of the following questions, which they should share with the rest of the class. In this activity students will be challenged to make hypotheses about civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. It will be helpful for students to return to the timelines they created in the second activity as a reference point while completing this exercise.
To help them understand the task they will be completing in this activity, begin by asking students to look at one contemporary object on which writing is found, such as a penny.
They should imagine they are from the distant future. They know the English language, but they know little else about America in the 21st century. What hypotheses can they make from a penny?
The members of this unknown civilization. Cuneiform writing was understood before we knew much about civilization in Ancient Mesopotamia. How did that happen? In what is now Iran, there is an inscription carved high on a rock face with the same message in three different languages. One is in Persian the language that is still used in Iran today and another is Assyrian cuneiform from Mesopotamia. In , an Englishman—Sir Henry Rawlinson—copied the inscriptions from that rock. Once he had translated the Persian, he was able to use the Persian as a key to decipher the cuneiform.
As a result, people were able, for the first time, to read the writing on clay tablets found in the vicinity of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Ask students to think about the previous lesson in which they learned about how the use of writing might have evolved in Mesopotamia. The first writing recorded agricultural transactions. What kinds of thoughts, ideas, actions, or things were easiest to put into pictures? What kinds of things did they believe were the most necessary to keep a record of?
Social studies. Ben Davis November 6, What caused Sumerians to develop writing? Which of the following did Sumerians write with? What term describes the Sumerian writing system? Who were probably the first to develop a script? What are the 1st 3 words in the Bible? The Sumerians first invented writing as a means of long-distance communication which was necessitated by trade.
Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the writing of cuneiform c.
Who invented the alphabet? What is the world's first kingdom? Is Sumerian older than Egypt? What is the oldest language on earth? Can you learn Sumerian? What is the oldest writing ever found? In which direction did the Sumerians read? What was a benefit of the Sumerian writing system? What did the Sumerians invent? Is Sumerian the oldest language?
What is cuneiform writing? Similar Asks. What types of environmental challenges does a developing nation encounter as it develops? What is the main difference between developed countries and developing countries Brainly? What is the difference between developed developing and underdeveloped countries?
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