Mondays without my human geo buddy

Today in class we learned about:

• Europe and the Americas (western world)
• Northern hemisphere is when your talking about anything north of the equator
• Southern hemisphere is when your talking about everything south of the equator
• Pre-history is before people knew how to write
• populations rose due to increase ability to care for young children
• Initially, humans were parts of migratory groups which hunted, fished and gathered plants for food.
• Neolithic Age (new stone age) was marked by advanced tool making and the beginnings of agriculture
• Agricultural Revolution:
• Agricultural refers to farmers
• Also known as the Neolithic Revolution this was a shift from itinerant hunting/gathering to more permanent settlements centered on agriculture(beginning in southern Asia)
• Hierchies appeared in village life; the status of women was lowered as women were confined more to domestic duties
• Invention of wheel and plow make it possible to produce enough food for storage
• Villagers were polytheists, worshipped multiple nature, human and animal gods
• The earliest cities: Mesopotamia
• Sumer
• Sumer occupied the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
• Population increased drastically due to new irrigation techniques
• Cities and towns were founded, some with as many as 40,000 inhabitants
• More adequate food storage allowed for diversity in professions: Priests, tradesmen, artisans, politicians, farmers
• Kings emerged, as did family dynasties and the concept of the "city state"
• Sumerians invented the earliest form of writing, known as "Cuneiform"
• "City-state" - area that had its own government
• Sumer:
• A pantheon of Sumerian gods and goddesses emerged, with may of the deities representing the natural elements of the world
• The worlds first (surviving) epic was the Sumerian "Epic of Gilgamesh," which was the great flood
• Sumerians first divided the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds; they also organized a calendar based on moon cycles
• The ziggurat was a Sumerian temple built on top of a "mountain" of earth
• King Hammurabi of Babylon created a series of laws known as the 'Hammurabi`s Code"