Sumer or Later Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sumer

A Sumerian document dating to 3500 BCE is the first written confirmation we have of the wheel. Remnants indicate the invention started with a need for a pottery wheel - and once the concept was born it evolved into use for transportation.

The oldest wheel found in archeological excavations was discovered in what was Sumer and is believed to be over 5,500 years old.

A lot of of Sumerian art shows our earliest images of wheeled vehicles, from simple rollers to carts and chariots with axles. Archeologists and historians date the original time frame for the invention between 10,000 and 8000 BCE - in what we call the "Pre-Pottery Neolithic A" period in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region (which includes Sumer) of the Fertile Crescent.

Answer: It arose in all these civilizations at about the same time

Archeologists have discovered inscriptions in Harappa, Pakistan, as well as throughout Egypt and southern Mesopotamia (where Sumerians lived.) All date to about the same time period, somewhere around 3400 BCE. Current experts suggest each form of writing sprang up independently of the other two as none share any lexis. There are currently over a half million known written works dating between 3500 BCE and 1 BCE.

Answer: Sumer

Sumer lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is known today as southern Iraq. Around 3500 BCE Sumerians learned how to construct levees and irrigation canals. This made it possible to create the first stable food supply to villages which eventually became what Sumerians called "city-states."

Early city-states are estimated to have housed as many as 50,000 people - with the average city-state population being between 10,000 and 20,000. All had similarities to our cities of today including a local government, religious center, merchants/shopkeepers, craftspeople and artisans who created artwork and sophisticated jewelry, even by today's standards.

City-states were simple in structure, but Sumerians considered plumbing to be one of their greatest achievements as each city-state had its own sewer system and flushable toilets.

Answer: Laws of Ur-Nammu

The chronology of the foundation for our current laws is:
1. Laws of Ur-Nammu, circa 2112-2095 BCE
... The first known Sumerian laws
2. Summerian Laws, circa 1800 BCE
... Expanding on the Laws of Ur-Nammu these laws lay the foundation for the Code of Hammurabi
3. Code of Hammurabi, circa 1728 - 1686 BCE
... These laws expanded on Sumerian Laws
4. Hittite Laws, circa 1650 - 1100 BCE
... These laws modified older Babylonian law

Answer: Ziasudra

One of the earliest pieces of literature known to humankind today is the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Pieces of the poem have been found throughout Mesopotamia indicating the importance given to the legends it contains, including the story of Ziasudra and the flood. Although Sumerians were polytheistic (believers in multiple gods) their written accounts has phrases and details which appear more than 1,000 years before the earliest Old Testament/Pentateuch writings. By that time Ziasudra's name had been changed to Noah.

Neptune was the Roman god of the sea.

In various Hindu traditions, Manu is a title accorded to the progenitor of mankind, and also the very first king to rule this earth, who saved mankind from the universal flood. Most of these Hindu flood texts date to the 6th century BCE.

Answer: Chinese Neolithic village of Jiahu

As best as can be documented, the Neolithic people were the first to brew beer, about 7000 BCE. It had an alcoholic content of 10%. However, archeological evidence indicates the road to brewing beer began 2,000 years earlier.

Around 3500 BCE the Sumerians gave credit to their fertility goddess, Nin-Harra, for inventing beer. By that time the process had evolved. 13 gallon jugs show scratched grooves so tiny stones would settle there and filter crystals out of the beer. The main ingredient Sumerians used was a variety of wheat called emmer, which is now practically non existent.

Answer: The same as today, around 5 years old

A Sumerian school was called an Edubba or "Tablet House" and was generally located in each city-state's temple. Scribal apprentices would begin training around the age of 5. The schools were mostly for privileged boys, but some girls attended as well. School work was done on clay tablets, which could be erased and reused. Thousands of these tablets still exist today, so much is known about the first recorded school system in history. School days consisted of lessons in the same basics we teach today: reading, writing and arithmetic.

For older students great emphasis was placed the study of proverbs and on mathematics, including the teaching of algebra, geometry and some trigonometry. Students were required to calculate quantities and survey fields. Advanced students learned about writing contracts and the handling of other business and financial matters.

After graduating the students were known as scribes and specialized in areas such as legal affairs, field surveying, palace administration or domestic affairs.

Excavations of school tablets in quantity dating to 2500 BCE and smaller earlier numbers show that Sumerian schools were first formed around 3000 BCE.

Answer: Sumerian agriculture began 100 years before Egyptian

Sumerians' first farming site was in the city-state of Eridu, Sumer (now known as Abu Shah Rain, Iraq) around 5300 BCE. Eridu, which loosely translates to "mighty place," became Sumer's earliest city-state, and was located about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from the legendary biblical city of Ur, the reported birth place of Abraham.

The first evidence of agriculture in Egypt was discovered in Fayum. Those findings are dated to 5200 BCE.

The transition from "hunter gatherer" to tending crops is considered the most significant factor leading to civilization as we know it today. However, not all villages and towns involved with earliest farming evolved into large centers of metropolitan culture. Notable exceptions where early civilizations didn't continue to grow and flourish are: Jericho, Israel - thought to have the oldest agricultural structure, dating back somewhere between 7000 and 11,000 BCE and Hayuk, Turkey where people began farming around 6500 BCE.

Answer: Sumer

The Epic of Gilgamesh relates the story of two Sumerian city-states (Kish and Erech) seeking power and control over the other. When Kish threatened war the reaction in Erech was similar to that of a modern democratic government, they convened the first known "Bicameral Congress."

The elders of the city-state, equivalent to an executive branch of government, met with the body of young men who would be the ones to do the fighting.

The purpose of this first "Bicameral Congress" was similar to today: to decide on whether to declare war or take an alternative route. They decided in favor of going to war for reasons still familiar to us: to protect their city-state and its national security.

Gilgamesh is said to have lived ca. 2700 BCE and the earliest known writings of this story date to ca. 2100 BCE. It would take another 3500 years for the first known democratic government to be formed in Greece - in 510 BCE.

Answer: Enheduanna, Sumerian poetess

A disk excavated from ruins found in the city of Ur shows an image of Enheduanna on one side and an inscription on the other indicating she was the daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, the ruler who united ancient northern and southern Mesopotamia. She lived circa 2285-2250 BCE.

Enheduanna was appointed by her father as Ur's high priestess of the Moon god Nanna (Sin,) probably as part of his overall political strategy to maintain power. Her religious hymns are also thought to be politically motivated in support of her father's goals and ambitions. Nevertheless she was an accomplished writer who influenced future literature, particularly through joining the concept of a personal god or goddess with a political and religious ideology.

About 4,000 lines of Enheduanna's poetry have been translated, mostly from original texts. A collection of these translations can be found in "Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart : poems of the Sumerian high priestess Enheduanna" / [edited] by Betty De Shong Meador ;1st ed.Austin : University of Texas Press, 2000. ISBN: 0292752415

Shin-eqi-unninni is credited with being the author of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Although Gilgamesh is believed to have lived around 2700 BCE, the first documented tablets naming Shin-eqi-unninni as the epic's author only date to ruins from the library of Ashurbanipal of Assyria (669-633 BCE,) so we have no evidence that the earliest texts were absolutely written by him. The earliest Sumerian texts of the Epic we currently have date to ca. 2100 BCE, still later in time than the authenticated writings of Enheduanna.