Social Sciences and History / Unit 5 SSH 0405 short lesson, about 20 seconds
What Makes a Civilization: Uruk and Its Sisters
Captions available
The idea
A civilization is urban, specialized and stratified. Uruk in Sumer was among the first true cities: bronze, cuneiform about three thousand BCE, ziggurats, kings called lugals. Sargon of Akkad built the first empire, lasting about a century and a half.
In practice
Hammurabi's code and the Epic of Gilgamesh surviving Sumer's fall.
Where people slip
Berger dates Sargon near twenty-three thirty-four BCE.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Something wrong in this lesson? Flag it