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Hey, Maya, I’ve been reading this book about the Sumerian civilization and it’s fascinating! Did you know that the Sumerian civilization was the world's first empire? |
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As a future archeologist, absolutely! It’s an ancient civilization located in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They're known for a bunch of innovations in language, architecture, and more. |
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Yeah, the book says it was the Sumerians who first developed writing. They started with pictographs, creating over 500 of them, which eventually evolved into cuneiform script. |
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Exactly. They’re wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets that you can see in museums. The Sumerians recorded so many things on the clay tablets, from details of their everyday life to epic poems like the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” |
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Oh, I’ve heard of the epic before. It’s just unbelievable how they created writing systems and developed their own literature long ago. |
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Totally! Moreover, they were the first to build cities, functioning like small nations. Every city had a temple called the ziggurat, a kind of a stepped pyramid. |
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I came across a picture of the ziggurat from the book. It looks incredible! But why did such an advanced civilization eventually fall? |
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The Sumerian civilization faced invasions, and their people declined. Even though Sumer disappeared, its culture lived on and eventually influenced Hebrew, Greek, and Roman cultures. |
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That's a lot of history. It's incredible how their legacy endured through the centuries. |
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