From Then To Now - Mesopotamian Evolution

Today in class we watched a video on the evolution from Mesopotamia, to what life is like now. It was a three minute video showing someone on Google Earth. They zoomed in on the middle East. As the video zoomed into the Middle East, a yellow map covered the countries, it represented a map as it would have looked in modern day Mesopotamia.

First it showed a plain map of Mesopotamia with not many details. It just said "The Ancient World" at the top and then it said things like Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, the Persian Empire...etc. Then that map evolved into a geographical map that was filled with color. There was a key at the bottom that explained what each color was representing, but even when you zoomed in, you couldn't understand what it said.

After it showed the geographical map, it turned into a more modern form of the Middle East. Not only did it show all of the countries like Jordan, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and so on, but all of the capitals of the countries were put in their place, beside a red star. The map had evolved from modern day Mesopotamia, to the present.

My partner was Mitsu, and once we finished watching the video, we started to make a See-Think-Wonder chart in our writer's notebook.

Our See part of the chart had the most information, we randomly started writing the names of the places we saw on the map, and anything that we may have noticed that was close to Mesopotamia:

1. The Earth


2. Mesopotamia


3. Babylonia


4. Iraq


5. Iran


6. "The Ancient World


7. Egypt


8. Syria


9. Africa (close to the middle east)


10. Yellow and green (colors on the map)


11. Tehran


12. Baghdad


13. The Caspian Sea


14. Kuwait


15. The Persian Gulf


16. The Arabian Gulf


17. Jordan


18. Saudi Arabia


19. Masqat


20. Qatar


21. Abu Dhabi


22. Blue sea surrounding the world


23. The Black Sea


24. Uzbekistan


25. Afghanistan


26. Yerevan


27. Ankara


28. Red stars, (for the capitals)


29. Dark pink (on the map)


30. Memphis


31. Jerusalem


32. Dimashq


33. Al Iskandariyah


34. Hittite Empire


35. Bulgaria


36. Assyria


37. United Arab Emirates


38. Turkmenistan


39. Yellow border lines


40. Africa


41. Europe


42. Asia


43. Cairo


44. Key


45. Colors

After we finished the See section of the See-Think-Wonder Chart, we moved on to Think...it was not as long.

1. We think Cairo used to be called Memphis (not Memphis, Tennessee), because as we saw the map evolving, we noticed that Memphis stayed in the same place that Cairo used to be.


2. We think that the yellow color in the map stands for the dry, desert areas, and the green areas stand for the areas that have more greenery.

The last section was...Wonder. In this part we asked about various questions we had.

1. When did Mesopotamia evolve into the modern countries that now stand in its place?


2. How did Mesopotamia evolve into the modern countries that now stand in its place?


3. How much land did Mesopotamia cover?


4. What was that big turning point that caused modern Mesopotamia to be formed...was there a war?


5. Why did Memphis change into Cairo, was there an important reason?


6. In Mesopotamia, did everyone speak a different language, depending on where they lived, or was there a nationally spoken language?

After everyone in the class shared a bit of their information, class was over and it was lunch time. It was interesting how everyone had different observations, inferences, and questions.

Bye!!!