Appleseeds articles from October 2004

Appleseeds archives from October 2004

Ancient land, modern land: where in the world?(Mesopotamia)
October 1, 2004... Thousands of years ago something happened along many of the great rivers of the world. People began to settle and farm in the valleys through which the rivers ran. One of the first of these places is the land we call Mesopotamia. The name comes...

Land between the rivers.(farming by Mesopotamians)
October 1, 2004... About 7,000 years ago, on the land that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an ancient people gave up their wandering life. They settled down and built homes of mud and reeds. With seeds of wheat and barley they had collected, they...

City life.(cities of ancient Mesopotamia)
October 1, 2004... What makes a place a city? Most experts agree that the first cities developed in ancient Mesopotamia about 5,500 years ago. At that time, large numbers of people began living closely together. Unlike the small villages where people had lived...

From agriculture to ziggurats: the many investors of Mesapotamians.
October 1, 2004... Thousands of years ago, the Mesopotamians made many discoveries that we enjoy today. Mesopotamians were not the first people to grow their own food but they gave the world new ways to do it. When they settled on the land between the...

Cuneiform--the world's first writing.(mesopotamian writing)
October 1, 2004... Today, we know a lot about life in ancient Mesopotamia. But how do we know? Where did all our information come from? Much of what we know comes from reading what Mesopotamians wrote thousands of years ago. The Mesopotamians were the first...

Be a scribe.(Your turn)(Mesopotamian writing)
October 1, 2004... "... may your pointed stylus write well for you..." said a teacher to his scribal student 4,000 years ago. You'll need: Now try it: 1 On a piece of paper, copy some cuneiform symbols from the word bank. (These symbols stood for...

Good eats in Babylon.(mesopotamian foods)
October 1, 2004... If there had been a fancy restaurant in Babylon, its menu might have read like this: The menu would have offered many other choices, too. The farmlands of Mesopotamia produced a great wealth of food. There were peas, lettuce, and beans....

The Code of Hammurabi.(social laws of the Mesopotamian)
October 1, 2004... Almost 4,000 years ago, King Hammurabi ruled the kingdom of Babylon, a part of Mesopotamia. He gave the world one of its oldest sets of laws. Archaeologists found the Code (collection of laws) of Hammurabi carved on a black stone slab....

Ur turn or mine.(ancient board games)
October 1, 2004... Archaeologists digging inside the royal tombs of ancient Ur discovered the world's oldest board games. (You can find Ur on the map on pages 2-3.) The 5,000-year-old boards were decorated with shells and blue and red stones. The same board game...

Unlocking the secret ...(history of Mesopotamians)
October 1, 2004... "I came to ask about the detective job!" Steven told the professor. Professor Enki said the job wasn't for a detective; it was for an assistant archaeologist. "Oh, too bad! I want to be a detective," said Steven. "But archaeologists are a lot...

The ashipu will see you now.(ancient culture of Mesopotamia)
October 1, 2004... Getting sick in ancient Mesopotamia wasn't much fun. Mesopotamians believed that their gods caused sickness when people made them angry. A man called an ashipu would visit you to decide which god was making you sick. He might try to chase the...

Enki and the flood.(Reading Corner)(Short Story)
October 1, 2004... Many years ago, before the mother goddess created humans, the gods did all the work on earth. They pressed their spades into the soil, dug the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and shaped the lifelines of the land. For 3,600 years, they groaned and...

Supernatural Mesopotamians.(Puzzle Power)
October 1, 2004... Meet the gods and goddesses of ancient Mesopotamia. Then, see if you can match the description with the picture. Write the name of the right god or goddess on the line under each picture. If you get stumped, the answers are on the next page....