#like i have read entire people's THESES on mesopotamia just for fun. i couldnt explain what it is about it that gets me it just does

[hella1975]

hella I wanna look into mesopotamia so do you wanna give an overview of like the timeline or whatever. feel free to rant if you want bc it’s so interesting when you do

OKAY YES!!!! so the reason mesopotamia is such a big deal and is nicknamed the 'cradle of civilisation' is because, despite there being evidence of humanity before it, it was the first example of society. the first cities started in mesopotamia and so many HUGE inventions - the wheel, maths, astronomy, writing, irrigation, offical laws (including the first minimum wage!) etc - came out of mesopotamia.

so mesopotamia was a REGION, same as ancient egypt, and was located in what is now modern day iraq. it's always baffled me that people know SO MUCH about ancient egypt but know so little about its neighbour, especially when their cultures were very similar and considering mesopotamia EXISTED BEFORE ANCIENT EGYPT. mesopotamia started in around 5000 BC and ended with the fall of babylon in ~500 BC when it was conquered by the persian empire. (i cant remember the exact year my bad) ((also now is probs a good time to mention my only knowledge of mesopotamia comes from personal, unprofessional research. any mistakes are my own and this post is meant for idle conversation, not actual information)). oh and alexander the great conquered it at one point. boo 👎

a very simplified timeline is that mesopotamia had the sumerians, then the akkadians, then the babylonians, then the assyrians, but when i say 'simplified' i mean there was a lot of shit going on in between that and there's also like. neo-sumerians and neo-babylonians and it was all happening in different areas of mesopotamia so not everywhere was in the same 'period' and i will put my hand up and say i dont know SHIT about what all that was about. i can tell you for a fact that sumerian was the first language though and if i had to pick a fave dead language i'd go with sumerian. there's something so cool about a language being THOUSANDS of years old but the civilisation being so ahead of their time that we have pretty thorough records of it even now and there are experts that can speak it fluently. cuneiform (the writing style of mesopotamia, done on clay tablets) was invented for sumerian. sumerian was then replaced by akkadian, which the famous code of hammurabi was written in, and it's just done directly onto a big black pillar and it looks SO COOL look at this thing:

#*visibly shaking* stop talking stop talking stop talking #cannot stress enough how much this is all my own research and i am not a professional #please god if you're a fucking assyriologist or some shit reading this and notice a load of inaccuracies then pls forgive me #im but a humble 20 year old wasting my free time bc my adhd decided this of all things was something to fixate on #like i have read entire people's THESES on mesopotamia just for fun. i couldnt explain what it is about it that gets me it just does #ask #mesopotamia