Historical overview
Irrigation and exchange supported cities such as Uruk in third-millennium BCE Iraq. Temples and palaces organised labour. Cuneiform tablets preserve records of administration, trade and literature, while reflecting the concerns of literate institutions.
Chronology
c. 3500–3000 BCE: urban growth and early writing in southern Mesopotamia
Key terms
Mesopotamia; cuneiform; city-state; irrigation
Define each term in your own words and connect it to a specific example.
Source analysis
Ask who created a source, when and for whom; identify its purpose and perspective; compare it with other evidence. A source can be valuable while incomplete or biased.
Practice
- How did writing support administration, and what can written records leave out?
- Identify one cause and one consequence of the development discussed.
- What is one limitation of a source used to study this period?
Source prompt: Identify one claim an extract or image supports and one question it cannot answer alone.