Maps and Stuff

So we were looking at Tigris and the Euphrates from way-back-when and where they were on the maps today.  It's mainly Iraq, Syria and Turkey.  Apparently the bloodiest war in the world currently, is going on the Syria.  They leader is trying to keep his place as leader.  Sumer is in between the Tigris and Euphrates river.  Another thing that increased the population is irrigation techniques.  When we were talking about lots of people and how they were becoming more civilized, I picture around 10,000, at MOST.  Instead though, there was about 40,000 people.  We briefly talked about Cuneiform which was the earliest writing ever, it took us many many years to figure out what it meant in today's world.  The places were divided into city-states.  Also, with better food storage, comes better professions.  City-states is when rules and guidelines started coming into play.   The gods that they worshiped were not people, but forces, like the sun or rivers.  Also the Sumerians were the first one to create the time: 1 hour = 60 minutes, 1 minute = 60 seconds.  Also they figured out the patterns with the moon cycles and basically created months.  There is a temple on top of a "mountain" of Earth called the Ziggurat.  Lastly we talked about the "Epic of Gilgamesh" it was the great flood that occurred and covered the whole Earth.   This is basically the flood with Noah in the bible.  They sort of copied them (something like that).  Mr. Schick said that scientist believe that there was never a time when the whole Earth was covered in water.  Oh well.  Somewhere in between all of that an announcement was made saying that we would be leaving school 2 hours early.  Best news I got.