Thread by @BaghdadiHistory

Mesopotamia is a historical region within the Tigris–Euphrates river system and is known as “the cradle of civilisation”. It occupies the area of present-day Iraq 🇮🇶

Here is a thread of things that started in Mesopotamia 🧵

Writing And Literature

Mesopotamians were responsible for the introduction and development of the written word. Cuneiform, which means ‘wedge shape’ which refers to the tools used to inscribe letters onto the writing surface, was invented by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia.

Time

They developed the sexagesimal system by which units of time are divided into 60 parts and its factors, which eventually gave us our minute of 60 seconds and an hour of 60 minutes. It is also from the Mesopotamians that we inherit the 24 hours of the day.

Sailing

Primitive rafts and floating vessels have formed key methods of transportation and travel for as long as humans have been moving about the world, but it was the Mesopotamians who revolutionized water travel by inventing sails.

Bricks

The Mesopotamians were the first people to mass-produce bricks, which allowed them to build up the greatest civilization the world had yet seen. The earliest examples of this go as far back as the seventh millennium BC.

Cities

Larger groups that settled together in Mesopotamia gradually organized governments, made laws, and began to form a social hierarchy. The cities themselves became more than just collections of houses by constructing temples, public gardens, trading places and more.

The Wheel

The wheel has its origins around the same time as Cuneiform, in the latter half of the 4th millennium, proving that this was a time of huge innovation in human thought and design.

Mathematics

Before, 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. It was also here where it is said the concept of zero was introduced as a number.

Currency

The Mesopotamian shekel – the first known form of currency – emerged nearly 5,000 years ago.

Board games

Made in the mid-third millennium BC, the Royal Game of Ur is considered the world’s first strategic board game. Players raced to get their tokens to the end of a course, moving them each time they rolled the dice and attempting to capture each other’s pieces.

Administration and Accounting

Using a wedge-shaped stylus and a tablet made of clay, stone, metal, or wax, early traders would take note of their produce and sales, listing what was sold, the quantity, date, and buyer. Later the uses of Cuneiform extended to urban planning.

Sources:

google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thec…

google.co.uk/amp/s/theconve…

ancienthistorylists.com/mesopotamia-hi…

google.co.uk/amp/s/www.hist…