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Mesopotamia [a] is a historical ... including the invention of the wheel, the planting of the first cereal crops, the development of cursive script, mathematics ...
The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform script is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs ) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial).
Similar wheels have been found in the hilly regions of Switzerland and southwest Germany, but the Ljubljana Marshes wheel is bigger and older. It shows that wooden wheels may have appeared almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Europe, though finds of actual wheels from Mesopotamia date from significantly later.
Many modern scholars suggest that the first potter's wheel was first developed by the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia. [3] A stone potter's wheel found at the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq has been dated to about 3129 BC, [4] but fragments of wheel-thrown pottery of an even earlier date have been recovered in the same area. [4]
A potter's wheel from the middle of the 5th millennium BC is the oldest ever found, and predates evidence of wheels in Mesopotamia by several hundred years. [19] The culture also has the oldest evidence of wheels for vehicles, which predate any evidence of wheels for vehicles in Mesopotamia by several hundred years as well. [16] [20] [21] [22]
Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia. The Civilization of Mesopotamia ranges from the earliest human occupation in the Paleolithic period up to Late antiquity.This history is pieced together from evidence retrieved from archaeological excavations and, after the introduction of writing in the late 4th millennium BC, an increasing amount of historical sources.
According to Christoph Baumer, the earliest discoveries of wheels in Mesopotamia come from the first half of the third millennium BC – more than half a millennium later than the first finds from the Kuban region. At the same time, in Mesopotamia, some intriguing early pictograms of a sled that rests on wooden rollers or wheels have been found.
Seated parturient figurine from the Halaf period. Anatolia - 5th millennium BC. Walters Art Museum - Baltimore. The prehistory of Mesopotamia is the period between the Paleolithic and the emergence of writing in the area of the Fertile Crescent around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as surrounding areas such as the Zagros foothills, southeastern Anatolia, and northwestern Syria.