Die Aufgabe, die Du da stellst, ist ziemlich gewaltig. Ich befürchte, dass Du Dir da selbst helfen musst. Im Internet ist zu diesen Völkern eine Menge zu finden. Alleine schon Wikipedia (auch die Englische) enthält eine Fülle an Informationen, die hier garnicht verdichtet dargestellt werden kann.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer
The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people [...]
By the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent city-states, whose limits were defined by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priest (ensi) or king (lugal), who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.[...]
The Sumerian city states rose to power during the prehistorical Ubaid and Uruk periods. The historical record gradually opens with the Early Dynastic period from ca. the 29th century BC, but remains scarce until the Lagash period begins in the 26th century. Classical Sumer ends with the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief "Sumerian renaissance" in the 22nd century, cut short in ca. 2000 BC by Amorite invasions. The Amorite "dynasty of Isin" persists until ca. 1730 BC when Mesopotamia is united under Babylonian rule. [...]
The Sumerians adopted the agricultural mode of life which had been introduced into Lower Mesopotamia and practised the same irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt.[7] Adams says that irrigation development was associated with urbanization,[8] and that 89% of the population lived in the cities [1].
They grew barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. They also raised cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. They used oxen as their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids as their primary transport animal. Sumerians caught many fish and hunted fowl and gazelle.
Sumerian agriculture depended heavily on irrigation. The irrigation was accomplished by the use of shadufs, canals, channels, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs. The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones continually replaced. The government required individuals to work on the canals in a corvee, although the rich were able to exempt themselves.
After the flood season and after the Spring Equinox and the Akitu or New Year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and then drain the water. Next they let oxen stomp the ground and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, and raked the ground three times, and pulverized it with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately the high evaporation rate resulted in a gradual increase in the salinity of the fields. By the Ur III period, farmers had switched from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley as their principal crop.
Sumerians harvested during the dry fall season in three-person teams consisting of a reaper, a binder, and a sheaf arranger. The farmers would use threshing wagons to separate the cereal heads from the stalks and then use threshing sleds to disengage the grain. They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture. [...]
The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, and so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, so that they came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills are known as tells, and are found throughout the ancient Near East.
The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples. Some scholars have theorized that these structures might have been the basis of the Tower of Babel described in Genesis. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as A.D. 400. The Sumerians also developed the arch. With this structure, they were able to develope a strong type of roof called a dome. They built this by constructing several arches.
Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails. [...]
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