Sixth Grade Work and Quiz!

Hello, students! We are having a quiz this Friday (as we have already discussed in class.) As promised, I gave you a study guide today and your maps and foldables to help you prepare.

This quiz is on Sumer, Ancient Egypt, and Caral/Norte Chico. Below you can find the study guide reproduced.

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 Sumer/Mesopotamia 

In Asia, in what is now Iran. Part of the “Fertile Crescent” stretching from Iran through Iraq and into Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries. “Mesopotamia” means “between the rivers”, as it was located between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. “Sumer” means “land of the civilized kings.”

Sumerians developed wheeled vehicles, writing (cuneiform), a polytheistic religion (multiple gods), governments based on walled city-states (which went to war with one another), social classes with priests and kings at the top, warriors and scribes second, down to farmers and merchants with slaves and peasants at the bottom. Sumerian city-states had ziggurats (stepped pyramids) as temples in their centers.

The earliest known written story is of the Mesopotamian hero-king Gilgamesh. In the story, he is two-thirds god, one-third man. He has adventures with his friend, the wildman Enkidu until Enkidu dies. In the story, the Sumerian idea of the afterlife is of the “House of Dust” where all is dark and gloomy. Gilgamesh learns that no man can live forever.

Caral/Norte Chico 

In what is now Peru. The people of Caral built pyramids earlier than the Egyptians. They made flutes and trumpets out of bones. The people of Caral had no pottery, so they could not boil food; they could only roast food. They used gourds to store food and seeds. They had stone tools and knew how to weave reeds together. They developed a drug out of the achiote plant. They had no warfare in Norte Chico! So their cities had no walls and no defensive weapons at all! This forced some historians to change their ideas about how civilizations develop.

Ancient Egypt 

In Northeast Africa. The Nile River runs through the center and the Sahara (serving as a natural protection) surrounds it. The Egyptians called the area near the Nile the “Black Land” and the Sahara the “Red Land.” Egypt was originally two kingdoms, Upper Egypt (in the South, near the source of the Nile) and Lower Egypt (in the North, near the mouth of the Nile.) The two kingdoms were united by Narmer in ~3000 BC. Narmer then created a double crown out of the crowns of the two kingdoms.

Egyptians built mastabas in this time period, but no pyramids. They believed the afterlife was for kings, pharaohs, and the rich and powerful. The dead had to pass the test at the Scales of Ma’at (was the heart as light as a feather?), have their body preserved, and have their name written down (in hieroglyphics) to pass on to the Two Fields, an afterlife that was happy and blessed.

 How are these societies similar? How are they different? How do they compare to the other societies we have learned about?