Christian Gonzalez
Foundations of Civilization
Mr. Livingston
14 September 2016
Contributions of Sumerians While the Sumerians were a civilization that existed around 3000 B.C., they made important discoveries towards civilization, technology, intellect, and politics. First of all, the invention of writing is credited to the Sumerians around 3200 B.C. Their writing began as pictograms that were pressed into soft clay tablets for record keeping purposes at first, and that form evolved of the next 200 years into what would be known as cuneiform. This allowed the Sumerians to use the writing of signs to symbolize different sounds. This made it possible for them to record things as historical event and commercial transactions, as well …show more content…
The code was a collection of 282 laws and standards, stipulated rules for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice (History 1). These codes were then carved into a four-ton black stone stela so they would live on passed Hammurabi’s …show more content…
For example, if a man gets caught stealing, then one of his hands gets cut off. And so it was like this for all 282 of these laws, each of a different degree of punishment. The extent of the law changed depending on what your social class was, the three classes being propertied class, freemen, and slaves. There was a law where if a doctor commits malpractice on a patient he would get punished based on who the person was. If it was a slave who died he would only have to pay a small fee, but if it was a rich man that died he would have both his hands chopped off. Hammurabi’s code was an early example of “An eye for an eye”. The same “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” later found in the Old Testament. The only flaw was telling if someone was guilty or not. For example, they were given tasks that had no basis of logic behind it, to judge whether someone was guilty or not. One way was the perpetrator would have to swim across a river, if he made it he was not guilty, and if he died he was
Foundations of Civilization
Mr. Livingston
14 September 2016
Contributions of Sumerians While the Sumerians were a civilization that existed around 3000 B.C., they made important discoveries towards civilization, technology, intellect, and politics. First of all, the invention of writing is credited to the Sumerians around 3200 B.C. Their writing began as pictograms that were pressed into soft clay tablets for record keeping purposes at first, and that form evolved of the next 200 years into what would be known as cuneiform. This allowed the Sumerians to use the writing of signs to symbolize different sounds. This made it possible for them to record things as historical event and commercial transactions, as well …show more content…
The code was a collection of 282 laws and standards, stipulated rules for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice (History 1). These codes were then carved into a four-ton black stone stela so they would live on passed Hammurabi’s …show more content…
For example, if a man gets caught stealing, then one of his hands gets cut off. And so it was like this for all 282 of these laws, each of a different degree of punishment. The extent of the law changed depending on what your social class was, the three classes being propertied class, freemen, and slaves. There was a law where if a doctor commits malpractice on a patient he would get punished based on who the person was. If it was a slave who died he would only have to pay a small fee, but if it was a rich man that died he would have both his hands chopped off. Hammurabi’s code was an early example of “An eye for an eye”. The same “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” later found in the Old Testament. The only flaw was telling if someone was guilty or not. For example, they were given tasks that had no basis of logic behind it, to judge whether someone was guilty or not. One way was the perpetrator would have to swim across a river, if he made it he was not guilty, and if he died he was