Kiara Bahamonde
M7
September 28th, 2014 The Sumer and Mesoamerican civilizations both began to create lunar calendars, pottery, and fiction writing. However, Sumer had a completely developed system of writing and began to write songs for their gods in contrast to the unfinished language of Mesoamerica. Pottery was also created and traded by both civilizations.
Sumer, one of the earliest civilizations, began to create pottery and works of art in copper, terra cotta, and clay. Cylinder seals were crafted for sealing and stamping the clay jars.
Mirrors, pottery, and ritual objects had been found at Mesoamerican sites, but were made of natural products such as obsidian and seashells. Mesoamerica used jade frequently as a material and not copper because they never advanced enough to discover metallurgy.
A written language was present in both civilizations, but Mesoamerica never got to a point of a complete language. Sumer began with pictograms which were small drawings carved onto hollow reed stems. They soon advanced to cuneiform. Cuneiform is key features of the pictures in wedge shaped signs. Some represented full words while others just were individual phonetic sounds. Sumer soon went on to write the world’s first written law, the Code of
Hammurabi. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a fictional literature, was also written by the Sumerians.
Mesoamerica had some indications of written language such as hieroglyphics found in the Olmec civilization, and writing from the Mayans and Aztecs. However, there was no completely developed language that every cultured used. In some cases there were stories of legends inscribed by later civilizations