What Did Sumerians Achieve By Inventing Makeup

The ancient Sumerians, who flourished thousands of years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what today is southern Iraq, built a civilization that in some ways was the ancient equivalent of Silicon Valley. As the late historian Samuel Noah Kramer wrote, "The people of Sumer had an unusual flair for technological invention."

In what the Greeks afterward chosen Mesopotamia, Sumerians invented new technologies and perfected the large-scale use of existing ones. In the process, they transformed how humans cultivated food, built dwellings, communicated and kept track of data and time.

The Sumerians' creativity was driven to an extent by their land'southward lack of natural resources, co-ordinate to Philip Jones, associate curator and keeper of the Babylonian section at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia.

"They had few trees, almost no stone or metal," he explains. That forced them to make ingenious use of materials such as clay—the plastic of the aboriginal world. They used it to make everything from bricks to pottery to tablets for writing.

But the Sumerians' real genius may have been organizational. They had the power to have inventions that had been developed elsewhere and utilise them on a much bigger scale. This way they could mass-produce goods such as textiles and pottery that they could then trade with other people.

As Kramer writes, there was something in the Sumerian identity that collection them to dream big and think ingeniously. "Spiritually and psychologically, they laid great stress on ambition and success, preeminence and prestige, honor and recognition," he explains.

The Sumerians' innovations gradually spread and led to the development of the modern technologically advanced globe that we live in today. Here are some of the areas where the Sumerians left their mark.

Mass-Produced Pottery

Sumerian Pottery — Bowl from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia.

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Other aboriginal people made pottery by hand, only the Sumerians were the commencement to develop the turning wheel, a device which allowed them to mass-produce it, according to Reed Goodman, a doctoral candidate in the art and archaeology of the Mediterranean at the University of Pennsylvania. That enabled them to churn out large numbers of items such as containers for workers' rations, sort of the ancient forerunner of Tupperware.

Writing

Sumerian Pictographs — An early on writing sample fromMesopotamia using pictographs to create a record of nutrient supplies.

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Jones says that it's likely, though not 100 percent sure, that the Sumerians were the beginning to develop a writing system. Either mode, information technology's clear that they were using written communication by 2800 B.C. But they didn't gear up out to write great literature or record their history, but rather to keep rail of the goods that they were making and selling.

"Their very first texts are just numbers and commodities," Jones explains. They did that with a system of pictographs, which essentially were drawings of various objects. Somewhen, though, they began to combine pictographs to limited ideas and actions. The pictographs evolved into symbols that stood for words and sounds.

Scribes used sharpened reeds to scratch the symbols into moisture dirt, which dried to grade tablets. The organization of writing became known as cuneiform, and every bit Kramer noted, information technology was borrowed past subsequent civilizations and used across the Middle East for 2,000 years.

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Hydraulic Engineering

A Mesopotamian relief showing the agricultural importance of the rivers.

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The Sumerians figured out how to collect and channel the overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers—and the rich silt that it independent—and so use it to water and fertilize their subcontract fields. They designed circuitous systems of canals, with dams constructed of reeds, palm trunks and mud whose gates could be opened or closed to regulate the flow of water.

The Chariot

Sumerian Chariot — Scale model of a unproblematicii-wheeledchariot which was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia.

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The Sumerians didn't invent wheeled vehicles, simply they probably adult the first two-wheeled chariot in which a commuter drove a squad of animals, writes Richard West. Bulliet in The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions . Goodman says that there's evidence the Sumerians had such carts for transportation in the 3000s B.C., only they were probably used for ceremonies or past the military, rather than every bit a means to get effectually the countryside, where the rough terrain would have fabricated wheeled travel hard.

The Turn

Sumerian Plow — Imitation of a Sumerian plow.

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According to Kramer, the Sumerians invented the plow, a vital technology in farming. They fifty-fifty produced a manual that gave farmers detailed instructions on how to use various types of plows. And they specified the prayer that should be recited to pay homage to Ninkilim, the goddess of field rodents, in order to protect the grain from being eaten.

Textile Mills

A Mesopotamian adult female weaving.

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While other cultures in the Centre Eastward gathered wool and used information technology to weave textile for vesture, the Sumerians were the first to practice it on an industrial calibration.

"The Sumerians' innovation was to plow their temples into huge factories," Goodman explains. He notes that the Sumerians were the commencement to cross kin lines and form larger working organizations for making textiles—the predecessors of modern manufacturing companies.

Mass-Produced Bricks

Sumerian structures — An archaeological site in Mari, Syria (modern Tell Hariri) that was an ancient Sumerian city on the western bank of Euphrates river.

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To make up for a shortage of stones and timber for edifice houses and temples, the Sumerians created molds for making bricks out of clay, according to Kramer. While they weren't the start to utilize clay equally a edifice material, "the innovation is the ability to produce bricks in large amounts, and put them together on a big scale," Jones explains. Their buildings might not have been as durable as rock ones, simply they were able to build more of them, and create larger cities.

Metallurgy

Sumerian artifacts — The lion-headed eagle made of copper, gold, and lapis lazuli by Sumerian civilisation.

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The Sumerians were some of the earliest people to use copper to make useful items, ranging from spearheads to chisels and razors, co-ordinate to the Copper Development Association. They likewise fabricated art with copper, including dramatic panels depicting fantastical animals such as an hawkeye with a lion's head. According to Kramer, Sumerian metallurgists used furnaces heated by reeds and controlled the temperature with a bellows that could be worked with their easily or feet.

Mathematics

Sumerian Cuneiform — Cuneiform script, adult by the Sumerians.

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Primitive people counted using simple methods, such as putting notches on bones, but it was the Sumerians who developed a formal numbering system based on units of 60, according to Robert East. and Carolyn Krebs' book, Groundbreaking Scientific Experiments, Inventions, and Discoveries of the Aboriginal World. At first, they used reeds to keep track of the units, but somewhen, with the development of cuneiform, they used vertical marks on the dirt tablets. Their arrangement helped lay the groundwork for the mathematical calculations of civilizations that followed.