Have you ever noticed that our geography and climate affect our way of living? Imagine how it effected the Mesopotamian people. Similar geography and climate is a material culture element because it exists and it is a basic physical need. Geography and climate leads to space, shelter, protection, fuel, health and sanitation. The people of Mesopotamia needed these basic needs to survive.

However, landforms and geography also affected the physical needs of the Mesopotamians, similar in many ways to how it effects the people of Sao Paulo. You see, Sao Paulo has two major rivers flowing through the city, the Marginal Tiete and Marginal Pinheiros. Since these rivers are polluted, it affects the lives of the people living in Sao Paulo. It creates unclean and smelly air. Mesopotamia also had two major rivers (the Euphrates and the Tigris) running through several of the city-states. These two rivers in Mesopotamia were not polluted. That affected them in a good way because the air was clean. Another comparison between Mesopotamia and Sao Paulo is the land. The land of Mesopotamia was a little different then the land of Sao Paulo. Mesopotamia was flat with some mountains and plateaus. Sao Paulo is similar to Mesopotamia because Sao Paulo is flat but with some hilly areas too. However, they are different as well-- Mesopotamia has more desert than Sao Paulo. Within Sao Paulo, there are several parks and green areas, but none used for agriculture. On the other hand, Mesopotamia had green areas, but they were used for agriculture. Natural resources like fish were scarce, so they had to farm to get food. So, as you can see, landforms and geography affect the people of Sao Paulo just like they affected the people of Mesopotamia.

While geography and landforms affect their lives, weather and climate affected both people's culture and lives. The Sumerians had a destructive and evil weather which included earthquakes, floods, and droughts. These natural disasters affected their way of living and also affected their crops and plantations, which influenced how their clothes were. The earthquakes would destroy the palaces and house holds, while the floods and the droughts destroyed the crops. So if the people didn’t have enough food to sustain their bodies to work so they could reconstruct the households and palaces they would get sick and maybe die. The high class people along the low class people used the same types of clothes, the only difference was that the lower class did not have jewelry. Men would wear draped or fringed kilts that were dropped over their left shoulder leaving the left shoulder bare. Women would wear draped and fringed robes with their hair tied back and pinned up. So once again the weather and climate had a huge effect on the people, of Sumer, lives.

Because the weather was destructive, people had to domesticate animals and plants. Did you know early civilizations like Mesopotamians domesticated plants and animals similarly and differently than today? The Mesopotamians would get the animal they found in the wild, bring them to their farms and they would domesticate them, and feed them. Now- a- days we would buy the animal, if we had a farm to keep it inside, and hire a farmer. This farmer would domesticate and take of the animal. Another example is that in Mesopotamia there was enough rainfall to get wheat and barley planted, and this would influence in the domestication of animals. In Brazil, people buy farms where enough rainfall happens  so they can plant and domesticate animals there.  And my final example is that a record was kept of how much barley was planted and how much was given, to see if the farmers would steal, if they did, they would pay high taxes. Brazilian people can plant what they want in their farm, keep it for themselves and/or maybe sell them to supermarkets. Mesopotamians were very smart and in many influenced our world today like the examples above.

Overall, the Graded sixth grader’s world view has a positive outlook. The weather here does not have striking temperatures, neither really cold or really hot. Another positive outlook is that there   arare rarely any natural disasters, like earthquakes and floods. Sao Paulo doesn’t have a lot of hills, wwhich makes it easier to get around. Also, within Sao Paulo, there are some parks and green areas, which always makes life more positive for the sixth graders. The Sumerian people’s world view of similar Ggeography and climate was negative.  Even though the Sumerian people could travel and not worry about finding different food or that they would accidentally eat different food that was poisonous because they were in the same latitude, they still had to worry about the destructive weather that included floods, droughts, and about earthquakes.   

By A.G, D.A. and L.C.

 Pictures:"wheat"http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/egypt/food/wheat.jpg.April 25th 2008