Danny Frey, age 13, of Shreveport, La., for her question:
WHERE WAS BABYLONIA?
Babylonia was an ancient region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now eastern Iraq. The region centered around the ancient city of Babylon, which stood about 60 miles south of present day Baghdad, Iraq.
Babylonia was a great civilization that existed in the region between the 2700s and the 500s B.C. From the civilization came one of the first forms of writing, a set of laws and studies in mathematics, astronomy and other sciences.
Three classes of people made up the society of Babylonia. The aristocratic or upper class included government officials, priests, landowners and some traders. In the common class were craftsmen, clerks and farmers. In the lowest class were slaves.
The first settlers in the region came from the north and northeast about 4000 B.C. They were farmers.
Then the Sumerians were the earliest invaders. They learned to drain the swamps and make brick from the mud. They farmed, dug canals and raised livestock. Craftsmen worked in clay, stone, bone, wood and metal. The Sumerian age of an independent city state began about 3000 B.C. and lasted until around 2400 B.C.
A Semitic ruler named Sargon of Akkad conquered Babylonia during the 2300s B.C. He took his Akkadian army north and west to the Mediterranean Sea and east into Iran. The Akkadians combined Sumerian civilization with their own culture.
The invaders remained in Babylonia only a short time. Elamites then invaded and the disruption they caused helped permit the growth of the first Babylonian Empire. Babylonian civilization then reached its greatest heights between 1800 and 1500 B.C.
Babylonia was part of the Persian Empire from 539 B.C. until Alexander the Greek took control in 331 B.C. Soon after Alexander died, Babylonian civilization crumbled.
Industry and trade were well developed by the Babylonians. They exported manufactured goods and perhaps some farm products to all parts of the Middle East. Traders brought back metal, wood and stone, raw materials which Babylonia lacked.
The people started using wheeled carts and chariots shortly after 3000 B.C.
Sometime before 3000 B.C., the Sumerians began to produce written records in Babylonia. The writing consisted of picturelike symbols scratched on lumps of clay. The symbols later were simplified to produce cuneiform writing. The use of cuneiform probably lasted until about the start of the Christian Era.
Archaeologists have found hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets in Babylonia and as far away as Egypt. The tablets are in Sumerian and in various dialects of Akkadian, the Semitic language of Babylon itself.
Mathematical and astronomical texts show that the ancient Babylonians had developed the 360 degree circle and the 60 minute hour. They understood fractions, squares and square root and could also predict eclipses of the sun and moon.