EARLY

CIVILISATI
ON
PAGE 34 & 35
INTRODUCTION
● A civilisation is a type of advanced society.

● People lived in a large settlements in a civilisation.

● Besides farming, some people and other jobs to do.

● There was a small group of people organised and controlled

the people’s live.

● Some people were more important than others.

EARLY CIVILISATIONS
● 3 early civilisations were developed near
rivers.

● Land near the rivers was fertile.

● Farmers grew plenty of food.

● The food they grew made the civilisations to

develop.
The 3 civilisations had few similarities:
● Larger permanent settlements

● A form of writing

● New technology

● Special style of art

WHAT WILL WE LEARN TODAY?
● Ancient Sumer

● Indus Valley Civilisation

● Shang Dynasty
ANCIENT SUMER
● Around 5000 BCE, the first people in Sumer lived in
small villages.

● By 3600 BCE, more people lived in larger towns.

● The towns became city-states, with its own ruler and

government.

● City-states = a city and the land around it.

SUMER
● earliest known civilization

● located in the southernmost part of

Mesopotamia

● between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,

● later became Babylonia and is now southern 

Iraq
● Mesopotamia is often referred to as the ‘cradle of
civilisation’ because the people of the ancient Sumer
were the first known civilisation who could write.

- They used over 500 pictographs in their writing.

- Their writing dates back to 3500 BC and was called

cuneiform (which means ‘wedge-shaped’). 
- A blunt reed was used to make marks on clay tablets,
which left a wedge shape.

- These clay tablets were left to dry in the sun.

- Historians have been able to find out about life in this

ancient civilisation through the study of these tablets
● Ziggurats were temples. 

● The Sumerians believed that powerful gods lived in the

sky.

● They built huge structures, called ziggurats, with steps

climbing up to the top.

● Religious ceremonies were held at the very top.

● The Ziggurat was built in the center of town.

ANCIENT SUMER
SUMERIANS’ INVENTIONS
● They put wheels on carts and probably invented the sail for sailboats.

● They developed the first written language, called cuneiform.

● They invented cylinder seals as a form of identification to sign contracts with their personal
cylinder seal.

● They invented the first super hero, Gilgamesh. 

CYLINDER SEAL
GILGAMESH
CUNEIFORM
CLASSES OF PEOPLE
● There were four main classes of people in ancient
Sumer:

- the priests

- the upper class

- the lower class

- the slaves. 
INDUS VALLEY
● Farmers settled in the Indus Valley in about 4000
BCE.

● The first cities appeared in about 3000 BCE.

● There were many towns by 2600 BCE.

● No one knows how the society in Indus was

organised.
● It occupied both sides of what is now the border between Pakistan
 and India.

● The biggest cities of the Indus Valley civilization were Harappa

and Mohenjo-daro.

● Both were in what is now Pakistan. 

● People ran water channels from rivers to the fields.

● The Indus people were among the first to grow cotton and use it to

make cloth. 
● They also might have been the first people to raise
chickens.

● Indus merchants used carved stones called seals to mark

their goods.

● These seals have been found in Mesopotamia

● This means that the two regions might have traded with
each other.
Indus Valley Civilisation
THE SHANG DYNASTY
● Began in about 1600 BCE.

● Archaeologists have found remains of many cities

from this time.

● The first king of the Shang Dynasty was Cheng Tang.

● Based around the Yellow River in China.

● The Shang were the first Chinese Dynasty to
invent writing and have a recorded history.

● The Shang also developed bronze technology.

● It is sometimes referred to as the Yin Dynasty.

CHENG TANG
THANK YOU