Ancient Sumerian Architecture

Ancient Sumerian ArchitectureStructural Designs THAT changed the course of civilizations By Miguel Espinal

No architectural profession existed in ancient Mesopotamia.

Scribes were drafted and managed construction of buildings for religion, infrastructure, military and royalty.

The Mesopotamians regarded 'the craft of building' as a divine gift taught to men by the gods.

The Sumerians are the earliest known civilization on Earth.

Excavations have revealed ancient architectural designs which are marvelously still being used today.

Romans, Greeks, and Eurasians call their architecture culturally unique, in truth they are derivative of a much earlier innovation and design from ancient Sumerians.

Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement originated in the organized city-states of Early Dynastic Sumer.The units themselves grew out of the tradition of counting tokens used by the Neolithic cultural complex of the Near East. The earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus, developed in period 27002300 BC in Sumer.Abaci of a more modern design are still used as calculation tools today.

There was no building stone and very little lumber in the desert where the Sumerians lived.

To solve this problem, Sumerians traded for lumber and used mud from the river mixed with crushed reeds to make bricks.

The Sumerians were the first to build cities in this part of the world.

Some great cities of Sumer were Ur and Uruk.

The Sumerian development of the potters wheel led to the use of wheel carts to haul materials and tools. Use of copper axes and blades, wooden mallets and copper fasteners were used by the Sumerians to construct buildings and temples of enormous dimensions.The rope and pulley system was developed for lifting and setting large stone blocks and wooden beams into place.

The Sumerians were the first society to create a city as a constructed system.

They were proud of this achievement as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh which opens with a description of Uruk its walls, streets, markets, temples, and gardens.

The typical city divided space into residential, trade, religion, crafting, and governing spaces.

We know that long ago, the Sumerians used these methods almost consistently, and it reared some of the most lovely and varied forms of architecture ever devised. The angles, graceful curves, and the foundations of an ordinary square; developed into an arch or a dome, an octagon or a circle. Constructed using primitive tools and detailed precision by a proud ancient culture.Text sources indicate; open space surveying and planning , was a major part of the layout techniques used by scribes and builders to construct these city-states.

Sumerians were the first to construct cities of any kind and soon they began developing and improvising on their own innovations.

Later cultures are credited for being the first to create architectural designs. A cultural propaganda misconstrued by unfounded evidences that have tried to steal the glory from the Sumerians.

Sumerian construction paved the way for how buildings are designed today, confirming Sumerian architectural innovations have survived the test of time.