Textbook

Today in human geography with Mr. Schick we started reading out of a textbook that we will be reading more often this quarter. We started with the title of the article called Early River Valley Civilizations 3500 B.C-450 B.C. The next information was about how the fertile crescent was a desert climate, and the curved shape and richness of soil got it its name. The land in between the Tigris and Euphrates river in the fertile crescent is called Mesopotamia which means "Land between the rivers". These rivers flow southeast to the Persian Gulf. These rivers flood the land once a year, leaving mud called silt which is rich soil that they planted in. The problems with this spot however was the unpredictable flooding, no natural barriers, natural resources were limited, building material and other such things were very scarce. Over living there for hundreds of years they came up with ways to fix these problems, like digging irrigation ditches for water, carrying it to the fields, building city walls with mud brick, and trading grain, cloth, and crafted tools with mountain and desert people for raw materials such as stone, wood, and metal. In order to do these things it took leaders and a large number of people working together. They had to then create laws in order to settle disputes over how land and water would be distributed, these leaders and laws were the beginning of Government.  Then AFTER i had written all this down we told o]us the importance of Hammurabi's code during the Babylonian empire which was the first set of written laws that held people responsible for their actions.