What people are saying:

• Facebook User: Yep that’s why I voted blue.i read the red part in the bible
• Facebook User: My denomination does remind us about caring for the least of these…and voting results can very much affect what is given or taken away…so, yes, on Sunday, we were reminded to vote, but not FOR any certain person or issue.
• Facebook User: What do you think would happen if the Democratic Party should try to require our grade schools to teach this scientific evidence and historic evidence, given it is so basic to understanding history and about governments?

  Sumer was the southern most region of ancient Mesopotamia. The region of Sumer was long thought to have been first inhabited around 5000 BCE. The world’s earliest known written texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between 3350 to 2500 BCE, following a period of proto-writing 4000 to 2500 BCE.

  The people who lived in Sumer, the Sumerians, wrote in clay what is called cuneiform script. The word used for Sumerican was simply “the land” or “the land of the black-headed people,” and, in the biblical Book of Genesis, Sumer is known as Shinar. The Sumerians establishing the city of Eridu in the region of Sumer. While the Sumerian city of Uruk is believed to be the oldest city in the world. Each city-state of Sumer was surrounded by a wall, with villages settled just outside and distinguished by the worship of local deities. Writing allowing for meticulous record of bills of sale, record keeping from rulers down to farmers and ranchers.

  The wheel actually arrived after the invention of agriculture, boats, woven cloth, and pottery. It was invented sometime around 3,500 BCE. The wheelbarrow, a simple cart with a single wheel, was invented by the ancient Greeks. The chariot was the supreme military weapon in Eurasia roughly from 1700 BCE to 500 BCE. In 1274 BCE the Hittites pushed the Egyptians back south into present day Lebanon. In one battle between the Hittites and the Egyptians some 50,000 soldiers and 5,000 chariots were involved, yet neither side won a total victory.

  Both men and women wore jewelry made of copper and sometimes gold. Sumerians wrote their music on clay tablets and how to play it and tune musical instruments. They had no stones with which to build, so they made bricks from the mud. They had no wood, so they harvested reeds to use instead. They invented the pottery wheel, the wagon wheel, the plow, and the sailboat. They use math and developed complex systems of measurement. As well as methods of dividing, multiplying and calculating angles. There are 12 cycles of the moon in each year and they used 360 degrees of a circle. As time passed they began the use of slave labor.
  The Sumerians divided time into minutes and seconds and so we have 60 minutes in an hour. The using of “60” came from a way they counted using the fingers of a hand and the other hand.

  In this method, people did not count the fingers themselves, but the segments (phalanges) between the finger joints on the four fingers of one hand. Each finger has three segments, so 4 fingers × 3 segments = 12 counts per hand.
  The thumb of the counting hand is used as a pointer to mark each segment. Once the 12 segments on one hand are counted, the other hand is used to keep track of completed sets of 12. Since the other hand has five fingers, it can count five sets of 12, giving 5 × 12 = 60 .

  The early Bronze Ages between the 6,000 and 5,000 BCE when people hadn’t yet figured out how to make a fire hot enough to melt iron from rocks. An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age (3300 to 1200 BCE) if it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from producing areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than other metals available at the time. Africa did not have a Bronze Age, and many areas transitioned directly from stone to iron. The Iron Age began in 1300 BCE.

  In around 3200 BCE they invented writing in clay called cuneiform. After 3000 BCE the number of symbols used to write meanings (words) were reduced to from around 1,500 to around 600 and symbols could be used to represent sounds in the beginning of the first alphabet. But then only a few people could understand writing. And a separate class of students, called scribes were taught to write cuneiform and sat at desks. Now a written record of knowledge could be saved.

  The Kingdom of Egypt developed in 2700 BCE was located in the lower Nile River Valley. The first Egypt pyramids were not built until 2,600 BCE. The key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs was side by side Greek and Egyptian writings with the Egyptian text in two scripts on a stone. This stone was named called the Rosetta stone. The large stones at Stonehenge in England were not moved into place until about 2200 BCE.

  From about 3150 BCE religion was central to everyday life the Egyptian dynasty whose kings were called pharaohs. By 1500 BCE Egypt had been trading via ship in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It was believed that the pharaoh was deputized by the deities (gods) in a role that was both as civil and religious administrator. The pharaoh owned all of the land in Egypt, enacted laws, collected taxes, and served as commander-in-chief of the military.

  The language called “Aramaic” is thought to have first appeared in about 10,000 BCE. If became one of the most influential languages in history. This language originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Arabia. It has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over 3,000 years. In ancient Greek, the Aramaic language was most commonly known as the Syrian language. The modern eastern branch is spoken by Assyrians. The Sumerian city of Harran came under Assyrian rule around 1305 to 1274 BCE. Several modern varieties of Aramaic are still spoken.

  By the 6000 BCE and 5000 BCE it was eventually displaced by Greek from about 335 BCE to

  30 BCE. By around 1000 BCE, the Arameans had a string of kingdoms in what is now part of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Here is a good website where you can see the changes to the alphabets. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/from-greek-to-latin-visualizing-the-evolution-of-the-alphabet/

  Scholars now recognize that writing systems may have independently developed in at least four ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (around 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland areas of Southern Mexico and Guatemala (by 500 BCE). Ink was invented in 2500 BCE by the Egyptians and Chinese and of course, it was used to make marks on papyrus.

  Assyria was a major Mesopotamian.city-empire (aka city-state) from the about 2000 BCE to 1300 BCE it changed into a territorial state and then turned into an empire until about 600 BCE. The Sumerian city of Harran came under Assyrian rule around 1305 to 1274 BCE. Assyria starched from Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and following the Euphrates and Tigris River into Iraq. Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 2900 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern day Iraq. The Assyrians created the world’s first great army held together by their superior abilities using siege warfare. It was from the 800 BCE onward that the Assyrian Empire expanded to great heights of power in the Near East, including Israel and Judah.

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  Best regards,

  Richard McManus CW3, Counterintelligence special agent, US Army, retired, Democrat