The earliest inhabitants of the civilized era in the two river basins were Sumerians. They came here before 4000 BC. They established the initial civilization of the two river basins. Akkadians, Babylonians (Amorites), Assyrians and Chaldeans belonging to Semitic languages inherited and developed the achievements of Sumerians, making the civilization of the two river basins an important page in the history of human civilization. Among them, the Babylonians made the greatest achievements, so the civilization in the two river basins is also called Babylonian civilization.
The civilization of the two river basins originated in the south of the two river basins. Here are the alluvial plains and deltas of the two rivers. Like the Nile in Egypt, these two rivers flood regularly, rising and falling. Only by building dams, ditches and beams to store water and drain water can people cultivate and harvest. Residents in the two river basins mainly use cattle and donkeys to pull wooden plows, and the most important crops are barley and dates. In ancient times, people in the two river basins compiled the earliest agricultural book "Agricultural Book" in human history. In the book, an old farmer tells his son how to farm and what to pay attention to.
About 5000 years ago, the residents of the ancient two river basins began to make pottery for daily use. The most important building material in ancient two river basins was clay. Wall-building, building and paving are all adobe made of clay mixed with broken wheat straw. At that time, all the urban buildings there were built with this kind of mud brick.
Sumerians invented writing almost at the same time as Egyptians. They used sharpened reeds as pens, carved words on the clay embryo, and then dried the clay embryo to become clay tablets. This kind of writing is called cuneiform because of its sharp shape. The calendar of the two rivers civilization is very distinctive. During the Sumerian Akkadian era, the lunar calendar was made, with the full and short moon as the timing standard, with 29 or 30 days per month, 12 months as 1 year (29 days in 6 months and 30 days in 6 months) and 354 days per year, and the leap month was invented, which was adjusted by setting leap months. At first, leap was set by experience, then there were 3 leap rules in 8 years and 10 leap rules in 27 years. Divide an hour into 60 minutes. Assyrian period defined the name of today's week and the rule of 7 days 1 week.
In astronomy, stars can already be distinguished from the five planets, and the ecliptic has also been observed. The ancient Babylonians were skilled calculators, and their calculation programs were realized with the help of multiplication tables, reciprocal tables, square tables and cubic tables. The Babylonian method of writing numbers deserves our attention. They introduced a value system based on 60 (hexadecimal), which was also used by Greeks and Europeans for mathematical and astronomical calculations in the16th century. Until 265438+the beginning of the 20th century, hexadecimal was still used to record angles, time and so on.
Babylonians have rich knowledge of algebra, and many clay tablets contain problems of linear and quadratic equations. Their process of solving quadratic equations is consistent with today's solution and formula method. In addition, they also discussed some cubic equations and multivariate linear equations.
From BC 1900 to BC 1600, a watch was recorded on a clay tablet (Printon No.322). After research, it is found that there are two groups of numbers, one is the hypotenuse length of a right triangle with integer length, and the other is the length of a right angle, from which the length of another right angle is deduced, that is, the integer solution of the indefinite equation is obtained. Later, it was also said that this was the crime value of 3 1 ~ 4 1. The geometric shape of Babylon is closely related to the actual measurement. They know that the corresponding edges of similar triangles are proportional, and they can calculate the area of a simple plane figure and a simple three-dimensional volume. At the beginning of 2 1 century, we divided the circumference into 360 equal parts, which was also due to the Babylonians. The main feature of Babylonian geometry lies in its algebraic properties. For example, the problem of horizontal line parallel to one side of right triangle leads to quadratic equation; Cubic equation appeared when discussing the volume of prism.
The mathematical achievements of ancient Babylon reached a very high level in early civilization, but the accumulated knowledge was only the result of observation and experience, and there was no theoretical basis. Sumerian is an isolated language that is not close to any other known language. Attempts to link Sumerian with other languages, especially the Ural-Altaic family, failed. Sumerian is a kind of sticky language, that is, its characters are composed of sticky characters.
Sumerians invented a hieroglyph, which was later developed into cuneiform. This is one of the oldest known human characters. Today, hundreds of thousands of Sumerian objects have been excavated, most of which are carved on clay tablets. These include personal and business letters, remittances, cookbooks, encyclopedias, laws, hymns, prayers, spells and scientific articles including mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Many large buildings, such as large sculptures, are also engraved with words. Multiple versions of many articles have been preserved because they are often copied (for example, as writing exercises). Copying was the only way for people to spread articles at that time. After Sumerians became the rulers of Mesopotamia, Sumerian remained the language of religion and law.
Even experts find it difficult to understand Sumerian writing. Especially the early Sumerian characters are very difficult, because they usually do not contain all grammatical structures. Sumer's technology includes: wheels, saws, leather, bracelets, hammers, saddles, nails, pins, rings, shovels, kettles, knives, spears, arrows, swords, glues, daggers, bags, helmets, boats, armor, quiver, scabbard, boots, slippers, forks and wine making.
Sumerians had three different kinds of boats:
1. Kayak is made of reeds and animal skins.
2. Sailing boats use asphalt to prevent water infiltration.
Wooden boats are sometimes dragged by human or animal power.