Notes

Ancient Mesopotamia

The word Mesopotamia comes from Greek words meaning "land between the rivers." The rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates. The first settlers to this region did not speak Greek; only thousands of years later, the Greek-speaking Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, conquered this land and carried his culture with him.

Mesopotamia is considered the cradle, or beginning, of civilization. Here large cities lined the rivers, and many advances took place. Mesopotamia is located in Southwest Asia. The first known civilization started there. A civilization is a group of people who have a high level of culture and order. People in a civilization belong to different social classes and do different types of jobs. A civilization has science and the arts as well as government, values, and beliefs. Mesopotamia, at first glance, does not look like an ideal place for a civilization to flourish. It is hot and dry. There is limited rainfall in Lower Mesopotamia. However, snow, melting in the mountains at the source of these two rivers, created annual flooding, which deposited silt (fertile, rich soil) on the banks of the rivers every year. The flooding of the rivers is why Mesopotamia is part of the fertile crescent, an area of land in the Middle East characterized by its rich fertile soil.