Hi, my name is Dr. Andrew Jamieson. I'm here at the Melbourne Museum to tell you about an exciting exhibition - The Wonders of Ancient Mesopotamia.
So, the ancient Mesopotamians are credited with many inventions that we still use today including the division of time and the sixty-second minute.
So, off the top of my head, I'm going to try and list some of the inventions of the ancient Mesopotamians in sixty seconds.
It starts with farming - agriculture and irrigation. Tools like the plough and the hoe. This generated an agricultural surplus, bringing about importanat developments and like writing and account keeping.
We see the introduction the wheel, carts to transport these commodities and this led to developments in boats, sailing and trade on the Tigris and the Euphrates.
We start to see the emergence and growth in cities, becoming large urban centres. And associated with these places, an increase in architecture - larger, more monumental stone-built buildings.
We see kings and rulers dominating these large, urban cities. This flows into developments in such things as metallurgy. Astronomy and astrology take off. We see literature, epic poetry and art. We also see important developments in things like science, mathematics, law.
These all represent foundations of western civilisation that have come down to us from ancient Mesopotamia.