Review Notes

1. Mesopotamia
• Ziggurat is a Sumerian temple
• In the old testament account of genesis Eden is its own place in Mesopotamia
• Mesopotamia- cradle of civilization
• First writing system and first mathematic, first law, monumental architecture
2. Egypt
• Egypt was a death obsessed culture
• The pyramids were tombs
• Egyptians believed in the life force name ka
• They believed when you die it is essential to prepare the body so the ka could leave the body and call it when it is ready.
• When the ka leaves the body it does not go right to the afterlife it has to hang around in the tomb
• When the ka is called to the after life it has to sit in the judgment where the heart is weighed against a feather. If it is lighter than a feather then your soul is destroyed and there is no after life.
• It was the job of the pharaoh to make sure it rained enough
• The geography of Egypt is there is dessert then green land and then the river
• The pharaoh becomes a symbol or god for making sure that the cycle happens over and over again of the river flooding
3. Ancient Greece
• Minoans- king Minos. Lived on Crete.
• The Minoans ended when a nearby island had a volcanic eruption it caused tsunamis to hit Crete and the gasses alter the climate a lot and it had a failure of their harvest and they could not survive.
• There are many ways that culture can collapse
• Misonian culture- Greeks of the Trojan war
• People think of whether the war actually happened and there are many theories about it
• After the Trojan war Greece goes into the dark ages
• Polis is Greek for city-state
4. Persian wars
• if the Greeks lose Athens then everything we know about European doesn't happen. And there is no north American civilization
• Then Athens becomes a huge power
• Meanwhile Sparta is gaining strength
• They start to fight